'scuse fer no 'casion," he mumbled
cantankerously.

"Come, now, boy, ya-as, yer is, too!" disagreed the parent, advancing
toward the subject of complication. "Yer see, Miss! Ain't I tole yer
he's de hard-haidedes' chile? Fus I'se 'blige whup 'im school, 'n'
nex' I cyan' git 'im 'way ter bless me! Ain't I jes tole yer!" And
again, with a firm hand, Trusty was lifted and transported across the
room to the open door. Miss North hastily suggested the final
formalities requisite for an excuse, but her voice was quite lost
among the reverberations of a more powerful organ:

"Ain't I jes tole yer so! Ya-as, yer is, too! Ain't I jes tole yer!
Come 'long, now; jes come 'long, now!"

They disappeared through the doorway, and then only the final
reverberations came back to them as Trusty was triumphantly exhorted
on his way.

* * * * *

But the worst of vicissitudes, and the best of them, only wait to give
place to new ones, and the old days change to new ones and the weeks
and the months go on; and, as the oft-repeated act becomes a habit, so
it had finally become an unvarying habit for Ezekiel to arrive at
school with Trusty's hand held loosely in his own, while Trusty
himself plodded unresistingly at his side.

But occasionally there comes a time, too, when the habitual thing
fails to happen.

It was one morning toward the end of May. Miss North had glanced at
the clock, which hovered close to nine, and then she had glanced
around the room at several waiting children, and into the yard, which
was filling rapidly, and wondered, half passively, why Ezekiel and
Trusty had not come. In a quickly changing, drifting undercurrent of
thought, she remembered their first arrival together--just how they
had looked as they stood, hand in hand, before her desk. Again, she
remembered Trusty as he had looked that first day, just after his
arrival, first sullenly rebelling, and then vibrating, as it were,
between a state of absolute indifference and one of suddenly aroused
interest. Strange, how it had grown to be a regular thing for Trusty
to be "interested"! She glanced around the room and out to the yard
again, and wondered why they didn't come; and when one of the children
came in from outside with an excited story of "ole Trusty racin' down
de road, an' 'is father after 'im," she listened.

"Ole man Miles say Trusty he cyan' come school dis yere day, an'
Trusty say he is, an' 'Zekiel say he is, to