The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1914-02-13

Capital Short Story by clarirsa Dixon

moments when the child, half in fear
and half in ecstacy, felt himself
| caught against grandfatherly heart
| in an embrace almost dangerously
| fervent, and heard q kind of fierce
whispering of such words as these:
"He is my blood my own, God!
My very ownl"
From this life, adventurous because
his temperament made it so, the boy
began at the age of six years to be
thrust forth at half-past eight o'clock
five mornings in a week to go in
search of booklearning, Gerald
Mason having found out that there
were. indeed, other kinds of learning,
but having supremest faith in this
particular variety to "set a man
where he belongs determined that
Rollo should waste no time among
| files and rivets and pigiron
| Six years the boy spent as almost
any boy of his age would have spent
them: doing the humdrum work as
signed him in the district school with
out overmuch driving; during the va
cations doing what the grandfather
asked of him without over-much urg-
ing, but seldom doing any useful
thing voluntarily
Its the way with boys" Gerald
Mason often said to himself in
apology for Rollo's want of spontane-
Gus helpfulness. "They think of the
beauty in a red-hot iron, not whether
it's time to strike. And red-hot iron
is pretty; but when I say strike he
strikes. That would satisfy master
and it ought to satisfy a grandfather,
only A wistful look would deep
en- in his eyes, guilty consciousness
would seize him-consciousness that
he longed for more than reason or
master should require. He longed
for an eye that would spy out work
unassisted by suggestion or com;
mand; for CHEEKY Goodwill; even for
delight in the work itself.
All this changed suddenly.
| On the evening of Rollo's 18th
birthday he laid his hand on the old
mans arm and said:
| 81 am not going to school any
more"
! What Not going to school? But
say you are going to SCHOOL, 1
want you educated. / want you to
be teacher. Not going to school!
Is this the boy I've toiled for with
breaking back and aching bones?"
Red spots burned on the boys neck
and cheeks. Something in his eyes,
Something made up of struggle and
OF melancholy, haunted the old man
for years.
| That's just 1.-THE way you have
to work. 1 can't stand it. 1 can't let
you do it any more. I'll help, at first.
| T L. a.
soon, I'll do all the work, and make
the dinners, too, as you've always
done for me, and you shall sit in the
big chair and smoke and sing and
look out of the window"
| Once again the boy felt himself
caught close to the warm old heart
as he had not been now for two or
three years. Once again he heard
that swift passionate whisper: He
is my blood, God, my very own"
Rollo seemed to shrink and shrivel in
that embrace and sudden great sob
shook his whole body.
"Why, my boy! My boy!"
IT'S a strange world, L think. L
can't understand things"
| What things?"
| I'm the books lords and ladies are
proud of their blood, but out of books
it's a blacksmith"
you don't understand, my boy.
It's not pride. I've neither shame of
my blood nor pride in it, We come
OF honest, Woodworking folks and
we'd never want to put a blush on a
dead face, so to speak, but we're not
glorying in their honesty. 1t isn't
that. It's this: being of one family
makes us care more for each other.
Yes, that's the idea. 1t makes us
draw closer together against all the
world. What, crying again? / can't
make out any reason"
II shall not go to school, anyway.
am sure of that. I'll do anything
else you say, but not that. I've got
To earn my living"
ooh, you've been hearing that talk
that man-about earners and