him on another
page, only asking how in the dickens "big A" got over there. He pulled
off his coat silently whenever ordered and took his whippings like a
lamb, without a murmur and almost without flinching, but every boy in
the school learned that it was dangerous to laugh at him; and though he
could not learn to read fluently or to train his fingers to guide a pen,
he could climb the tallest pine in the district to get a young crow for
Vashti, and could fashion all sorts of curious whistles, snares, and
other contrivances with his long fingers.

He did not court popularity, was rather cold and unapproachable, and
Vashti Mills was about the only other scholar with whom he seemed to be
on warm terms. Many a time when the tall boy stood up before the thin
teacher, helpless and dumb over some question which almost anyone in the
school could answer, the little girl, twisting her fingers in an ecstacy
of anxiety, whispered to him the answer in the face of almost certain
detection and of absolutely certain punishment. In return, he worshipped
the ground she walked on, and whichever side Vashti was on, Darby was
sure to be on it too. He climbed the tallest trees to get her nuts;
waded into the miriest swamps to find her more brilliant nosegays of
flowers than the other girls had; spent hours to gather rarer birds'
eggs than they had, and was everywhere and always her silent worshipper
and faithful champion. They soon learned that the way to secure his
help in anything was to get Vashti Mills to ask it, and the little girl
quickly discovered her power and used it as remorselessly over her
tall slave as any other despot ever did. They were to be seen any day
trailing along the plantation paths which the school-children took
from the district, the others in a clump, and the tall boy and little
calico-clad girl, who seemed in summer mainly sun-bonnet and bare legs,
either following or going before the others at some distance.

The death of Darby--of old Darby, as he had begun to be called--cut off
Little Darby from his "schoolin'", in the middle of his third year, and
before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write
in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance
at all times. He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his
reason, with characteristic brevity: "Got to work."

Perhaps no one at the school mourned the long-legged boy's departure
except his little friend Vasht