The horn sounded.  The travelers arose from the tables and hurried out to the coach.

“It was a good dinner,” Mr. Adams said to Jack when they had climbed to their seat.  “We should be eating potatoes and drinking water, instead of which we have two kinds of meat and wine and pudding and bread and tea and many jellies.  Still, I am a better philosopher after dinner than before it.  But if we lived simpler, we should pay fewer taxes.”

As they rode along a lady passenger sang the ballad of John Barleycorn, in the chorus of which Mr. Adams joined with much spirit.

“My capacity for getting fun out of a song is like the gift of a weasel for sucking eggs,” he said.

So they fared along, and when Jack was taking leave of the distinguished lawyer at The Black Horse Tavern in Philadelphia the latter invited the boy to visit him in Boston if his way should lead him there.

2

The frank, fearless, sledge-hammer talk of the lawyer made a deep impression on the boy, as a long letter written next day to his father and mother clearly shows.  He went to the house of the printer, where he did not receive the warm welcome he had expected.  Deborah Franklin was a fat, hard-working, illiterate, economical housewife.  She had a great pride in her husband, but had fallen hopelessly behind him.  She regarded with awe and slight understanding the accomplishments of his virile, restless, on-pushing intellect.  She did not know how to enjoy the prosperity that had come to them.  It was a neat and cleanly home, but, as of old, Deborah was doing most of the work herself.  She would not have had it otherwise.

“Ben thinks we ortn’t to be doin’ nothin’ but settin’ eroun’ in silk dresses an’ readin’ books an’ gabbin’ with comp’ny,” she said.  “Men don’t know how hard tis to git help that cleans good an’ cooks decent.  Everybody feels so kind o’ big an’ inderpendent they won’t stan’ it to be found fault with.”

Her daughter, Mrs. Bache, and the latter’s children were there.  Suddenly confronted by the problem of a strange lad coming into the house to live with them, they were a bit dismayed.  But presently their motherly hearts were touched by the look of the big, gentle-faced, homesick boy.  They made a room ready for him on the top floor and showed him the wonders of the big house—­the library, the electrical apparatus, the rocking chair with its fan swayed by the movement of the chair, the new stove and grate which the Doctor had invented.  That evening, after an excellent supper, they sat down for a visit in the library, when Jack suggested that he would like to have a part of the work to do.

“I can sweep and clean as well as any one,” he said.  “My mother taught me how to do that.  You must call on me for any help you need.”

“Now I wouldn’t wonder but what we’ll git erlong real happy,” said Mrs. Franklin.  “If you’ll git up ‘arly an’ dust the main floor an’ do the broom work an’ fill the wood boxes an’ fetch water, I’ll see ye don’t go hungry.”