“I am glad you think so well of me, Uncle Reuben; I must try to retain your good opinion; it was not of myself I wished to speak, however, but of you.  I hope you will learn to keep your own accounts, so as to be independent of anybody else’s assistance.  If you would give me a half an hour’s attention every night, I could teach you to do it well in the course of a few weeks or months.”

“Law, Ishmael, that would give you more trouble than keeping the books yourself.”

“I can teach you, and keep the books besides, until you are able to do it yourself.”

“Law, Ishmael, how will you ever find the time to do all that, and keep school, and read law, and take them long walks besides?”

“Why, Uncle Reuben, I can always find time to do every, duty I undertake,” replied the persevering boy.

“One would think your days were forty-eight hours long, Ishmael, for you to get through all the work as you undertake.”

“But how about the lessons, Uncle Reuben?”

“Oh, Ishmael, I’m too old to larn; it aint worth while now; I’m past fifty, you know.”

“Well, but you are a fine, strong, healthy man, and may live to be eighty or ninety.  Now, if I can teach you in two or three months an art which will be useful to you every day of your life, for thirty or forty years, don’t you think that it is quite worth while to learn it?”

“Well, Ishmael, you have got a way of putting things as makes people think they’re reasonable, whether or no, and convinces of folks agin’ their will.  I think, after all, belike you oughter be a lawyer, if so be you’d turn a judge and jury round your finger as easy as you turn other people.  I’ll e’en larn of you, Ishmael, though it do look rum like for an old man like me to go to school to a boy like you.”

“That is right, Uncle Reuben.  You’ll be a good accountant yet before the winter is over,” laughed Ishmael.

Christmas came; but it would take too long to tell of the rustic merry-makings in a neighborhood noted for the festive style in which it celebrates its Christmas holidays.  There were dinner, supper, and dancing parties in all the cottages during the entire week.  Reuben Gray gave a rustic ball on New Year’s evening.  And all the country beaus and belles of his rank in society came and danced at it.  And Ishmael, in the geniality of his nature, made himself so agreeable to everybody that he unconsciously turned the heads of half the girls in the room, who unanimously pronounced him “quite the gentleman.”

This was the last as well as the gayest party of the holidays.  It broke up at twelve midnight, because the next day was Sunday.

On Monday Ishmael arose early and walked over to Rushy Shore, opened his schoolhouse, lighted a fire in it, and sat down at his teacher’s desk to await the arrival of his pupils.

About eight or nine o’clock they began to come, by ones, twos, and threes; some attended by their parents and some alone.  Rough-looking customers they were, to be sure; shock-headed, sun-burned, and freckle-faced girls and boys of the humblest class of “poor whites,” as they were called in the slave States.