16.  “I am very glad to hear it,” quoth Hugh; “but if you please, sir, I should like to get out of his way as soon as possible.”

Definitions.—­1.  A-gree’a-ble, pleasing. 2.  Af-firmed’, declared. 4.  Ex-pens’es, costs.  Se-date’, calm.  Mod’er-ate, neither fast nor slow, Dis-po-si’tion, natural state of mind.  Con-fessed’, ac-knowledged.  So’cia-bly, in a friendly way. 11.  Fea’tures, the distinctive marks of the face. 13.  Re-sem’blance, likeness. 14.  Dil’i-gent, industrious.  Vis’age, the face. 16.  Quoth, said.

LXXX.  HUGH IDLE AND MR. TOIL. (Concluded.) (224)

1.  Now Hugh and the stranger had not gone much further, when they met a company of soldiers, gayly dressed, with feathers in their caps, and glittering muskets on their shoulders.  In front marched the drummers and fifers, making such merry music that Hugh would gladly have followed them to the end of the world.  If he were only a soldier, he said to himself, old Mr. Toil would never venture to look him in the face.

2.  “Quickstep! forward! march!” shouted a gruff voice.

3.  Little Hugh started in great dismay; for this voice sounded precisely like that which he had heard every day in Mr. Toil’s schoolroom.  And turning his eyes to the captain of the company, what should he see but the very image of old Mr. Toil himself, in an officer’s dress, to be sure, but looking as ugly and disagreeable as ever.

4.  “This is certainly old Mr. Toil,” said Hugh, in a trembling voice.  “Let us away, for fear he should make us enlist in his company.”

5.  “You are mistaken again, my little friend,” replied the stranger very composedly.  “This is only a brother of Mr. Toil’s, who has served in the army all his life.  You and I need not be afraid of him.”

6.  “Well, well,” said Hugh, “if you please, sir, I don’t want to see the soldiers any more.”  So the child and the stranger resumed their journey; and, after awhile, they came to a house by the roadside, where a number of young men and rosy-cheeked girls, with smiles on their faces, were dancing to the sound of a fiddle.

7.  “Oh, let us stop here,” cried Hugh; “Mr. Toil will never dare to show his face where there is a fiddler, and where people are dancing and making merry.”

8.  But the words had scarcely died away on the little boy’s tongue, when, happening to cast his eyes on the fiddler, whom should he behold again but the likeness of Mr. Toil, armed with a fiddle bow this time, and flourishing it with as much ease and dexterity as if he had been a fiddler all his life.

9.  “Oh, dear me!” whispered he, turning pale; “it seems as if there were nobody but Mr. Toil in the world.”

10.  “This is not your old schoolmaster,” observed the stranger, “but another brother of his, who has learned to be a fiddler.  He is ashamed of his family, and generally calls himself Master Pleasure; but his real name is Toil, and those who know him best think him still more disagreeable than his brothers.”