Yet the town long bore it with a gentle fortitude.  I believe it was not until the following spring that murmurs were really noticeable.  Naturally they were directed against Solon Denney.  By that time Westley Keyts was greeting Solon morosely, though without open cavil; but Asa Bundy no longer hesitated to speak out.  He quoted Scripture to Solon about the house that was swept and garnished, and the seven other wicked spirits that entered it, making its last state worse than its first.

And of course Solon was much troubled by this, though he never failed to rally to the support of the lady thus maligned, dwelling upon the advantage her mere presence must always be to the town.

“If she’d only let it go at that—­’her mere presence’—­” rejoined Bundy.  But Solon protested, defending the lady’s activities.  He became sensitive to any mention of her name, and fell to brooding.  He believed her to be a model woman, and little Roscoe to be a model boy.

“Why don’t you try to be more like Roscoe Potts?” I heard him ask his son in a moment of reproof.

My namesake took it meekly; but to me, privately, he said:—­

“Hunh!  I can lick Ginger Potts with one hand tied behind me!”

“How do you know?” I asked sternly.

He wriggled somewhat at this, but at length confided in me.

“Well, there’s a sell, you know, Uncle Maje.  You say, ‘They’re goin’ to tear the schoolhouse down,’ or something like that, and the other boy says, ‘What fur?’ and then you say, quick as you can, ’Cat-fur to make kitten britches of,’ and then we all laugh and yell, and I caught Ginger Potts on it, and he got mad when we yelled and come at me, and they pushed him against me and they pushed me against him, and they said he dassent, and they said I dassent, and then it happened, only when I got him down, he begun to say, ’Oh, it’s wrong to fight!  I promised my mother I would never fight!’ but I wouldn’t ‘a’ stopped for that, because teacher says he’s by far the brightest boy in school—­only just then Eustace Eubanks come along, and he laid down the meat he was taking home to dinner and jumped into the crowd and says:  ’Boys, boys, shame on you to act so like the brutes! That isn’t any way to act!’ and he pulled me off’n Ginger, and—­and that’s all, but I had him licked fair.”

“I shall not tell your father of this,” I said sternly.

“He has enough to worry him,” said my namesake.

“Exactly,” I said.  “But I advise you to cultivate a friendly feeling for Roscoe Potts.  Boys should not fight.”

“Well—­now—­I would—­but he’s a regular teacher’s pet.”

And remembering the letter that was not sent to Sam Murdock,—­that the teacher was my namesake’s love,—­I perceived that this breach was not to be healed.

CHAPTER XII

TROUBLED WATERS ARE STILLED