Jerome swallowed castor-oil, rhubarb, and the rest with a glare of fierce eyes over spoon and a triumphant understanding with himself that he took it because he chose, and not because the doctor made him.  It was odd, but Doctor Prescott seemed to have some intuition of the boy’s mental attitude, for, in spite of his ready obedience, he had always a singular aversion to him.  He was much more amenable to pretty little Elmira, who cried pitifully whenever he entered the house, and had always to be coaxed and threatened to make her take medicine at all.  No one would have said, and Doctor Prescott himself would not have believed, that he, in his superior estate of age and life, would have stooped to dislike a child like that, thus putting him upon a certain equality of antagonism; but in truth he did.  Doctor Prescott scarcely ever knew one boy from another when he met him upon the street, but Jerome Edwards he never mistook, though he never stirred his stately head in response to the boy’s humble bob of courtesy.  Once, after so meeting and passing the boy, he heard an audacious note of defiance at his back, with a preliminary sniff of scorn:  “Hm! wonder if he thinks he was born grown up, with money in his pockets; wonder if he thinks he owns this whole town?” The doctor never turned to resent this sarcastic soliloquy whereby the boy’s suppressed democracy asserted itself, but the next time he saw Jerome’s father he told him he had better look to his son’s manners, and Jerome had been called to account.

However, when he had repeated his speech which had given offence, he had only been charged to keep his thoughts to himself in future.  “I’ll think ’em, anyhow,” said Jerome, with unabated defiance.

“You’ll pay proper respect to your elders,” said his father.

“You’ll think what we tell you to,” said his mother, but the eyes of the two met.  Doctor Prescott might hold the mortgage and exact his pound of flesh, these poor backs might bend to the yoke, but there was no cringing in the hearts of Abel Edwards and his wife.  It was easy to see where Jerome got his spirit.

However, spirit needs long experience and great strength to assert itself fully at all times before long-recognized power.  Jerome, going up the road to Doctor Prescott’s, felt rather a fierce submission and obligatory humility than defiance.  He felt as if this great man held not only himself, but his mother and sister, their lives and fortunes, at his disposal.  Awe of the reigning sovereign was upon him, but it was the surly awe of the peasant whose mouth is stopped by force from questions.

It was not long before Jerome, going along the country road, came to the beginning of Doctor Prescott’s estate.  He owned long stretches of fields along the main street of the village, comprising many fine house-lots, which, however, people were too poor to buy.  Doctor Prescott fixed such high prices to his house-lots that no one could pay them.  However, people thought he did not care to sell.  He liked being a large land-owner, like an English lord, and feeling that he owned half the village, they said.