It was not until we were at the supper table that evening--with Halstead
sitting at his place, his eye still bandaged--that I found a chance to
explain fully why I had been gone so long on my errand.
Theodora and grandmother actually shed tears over my account of poor
little Ike. The old Squire was so indignant at the treatment the boy had
received that he set off early the next morning to interview the
selectmen. As a result, they took little Ike from the Doles and put him
into another family, the Winslows, who were very kind to him. Mrs.
Winslow, indeed, gave him a mother's care and affection.
The boy soon began to grow properly. Within a year you would hardly have
recognized him as the pinched and skinny little fellow that once had
lived at the Dole farm. He grew in mind as well as body, and before long
showed so much promise that the Winslows sent him first to the village
academy, and afterward to Westbrook Seminary, near Portland. When he was
about twenty-one he went West as a teacher; and from that day on his
career has been upward.
CHAPTER XXIV
BORROWED FOR A BEE HUNT
We were eating breakfast one morning late in August that summer when
through an open window a queer, cracked voice addressed the old Squire:
"Don't want to disturb ye at your meals, Squire, but I've come over to
see if I can't borry a boy to hark fer me.
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