The last words were spoken in a whisper, with one hand on my breast.

He tuned the strings and played the Fisher’s Hornpipe.  What a romp of merry music filled the house!  I had never heard the like and was soon smiling at him as he played.  His bow and fingers flew in the wild frolic of the Devil’s Dream.  It led me out of my sadness into a world all new to me.

“Now, God bless your soul, boy!” he exclaimed, by and by, as he put down his instrument.  “We shall have a good time together—­that we will.  Not a stroke o’ work this day!  Come, I have a guide here that will take us down to the land o’ the fairies.”

Then with his microscope he showed me into the wonder world of littleness of which I had had no knowledge.

“The microscope is like the art o’ the teacher,” he said.  “I’ve known a good teacher to take a brain no bigger than a fly’s foot an’ make it visible to the naked eye.”

One of the children, of which there were four in the Hacket home, called us to supper.  Mrs. Hacket, a stout woman with a red and kindly face, sat at one end of the table, and between them were the children—­Mary, a pretty daughter of seventeen years; Maggie, a six-year-old; Ruth, a delicate girl of seven, and John, a noisy, red-faced boy of five.  The chairs were of plain wood—­like the kitchen chairs of to-day.  In the middle of the table was an empty one—­painted green.  Before he sat down Mr. Hacket put his hand on the back of this chair and said: 

“A merry heart to you, Michael Henry.”

I wondered at the meaning of this, but dared not to ask.  The oldest daughter acted as a kind of moderator with the others.

“Mary is the constable of this house, with power to arrest and hale into court for undue haste or rebellion or impoliteness,” Mr. Hacket explained.

“I believe that Sally Dunkelberg is your friend,” he said to me presently.

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“A fine slip of a girl that and a born scholar.  I saw you look at her as the Persian looks at the rising sun.”

I blushed and Mary and her mother and the boy John looked at me and laughed.

“Puer pulcherrime!” Mr. Hacket exclaimed with a kindly smile.

Uncle Peabody would have called it a “stout snag.”  The schoolmaster had hauled it out of his brain very deftly and chucked it down before me in a kind of challenge.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You shall know in a week, my son,” he answered.  “I shall put you into the Latin class Wednesday morning, and God help you to like it as well as you like Sally.”

Again they laughed and again I blushed.

“Hold up yer head, my brave lad,” he went on.  “Ye’ve a perfect right to like Sally if ye’ve a heart to.”

He sang a rollicking ballad of which I remember only the refrain: 

     A lad in his teens will never know beans if he hasn’t an eye for
     the girls.