“Certainly not.”

“I thought, then, maybe you might have some sewing or some knitting to put out.”

“Why, Ishmael, I have been looking in vain for a seamstress for the last three or four weeks.  And I thought I really should have to go to the trouble and expense of sending to Baltimore or Washington for one; for all our spring and summer sewing is yet to do.  I am sure I could keep one woman in fine needlework all the year round.”

“Oh, ma’am, how glad I would be if Aunt Hannah would suit you.”

“I can easily tell that.  Does she make your clothes?”

“All of them, ma’am, and her own too.”

“Come here, then, and let me look at her sewing.”

Ishmael went to the lady, who took his arm and carefully examined the stitching of his jacket and shirt sleeve.

“She sews beautifully.  That will do, my boy.  Ring that bell for me.”

Ishmael obeyed and a servant answered the summons.

“Jane,” she said, “hand me that roll of linen from the wardrobe.”

The woman complied, and the mistress put the bundle in the hands of Ishmael, saying: 

“Here, my boy:  here are a dozen shirts already cut out, with the sewing cotton, buttons, and so forth rolled up in them.  Take them to your aunt.  Ask her if she can do them, and tell her that I pay a dollar apiece.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you, ma’am!  I know Aunt Hannah will do them very nicely!” exclaimed the boy in delight, as he made his bow and his exit.

He ran home, leaping and jumping as he went.

He rushed into the hut and threw the bundle on the table, exclaiming gleefully: 

“There, Aunt Hannah!  I have done it!”

“Done what, you crazy fellow?” cried Hannah, looking up from the frying pan in which she was turning savory rashers of bacon for their second meal.

“I have got you—­’an engagement,’ as the professor calls a big lot of work to do.  I’ve got it for you, aunt; and I begin to think a body may get any reasonable thing in this world if they will only try hard enough for it!” exclaimed Ishmael.

Hannah sat down her frying pan and approached the table, saying: 

“Will you try to be sensible now, Ishmael; and tell me where this bundle of linen came from?”

Ishmael grew sober in an instant, and made a very clear statement of his afternoon’s errand, and its success, ending as he had begun, by saying:  “I do believe in my soul, Aunt Hannah, that anybody can get any reasonable thing in the world they want, if they only try hard enough for it!  And now, dear Aunt Hannah, I would not be so selfish as to go to school and leave all the burden of getting a living upon your shoulders, if I did not know that it would be better even for you by-and-by!  For if I go to school and get some little education, I shall be able to work at something better than odd jobbing.  The professor and Mr. Middleton, and even the commodore himself, thinks that if I persevere, I may come to be county constable, or parish clerk, or schoolmaster, or something of that sort; and if I do, you know, Aunt Hannah, we can live in a house with three or four rooms, and I can keep you in splendor!  So you won’t think your boy selfish in wanting to go to school, will you, Aunt Hannah?”