h affected carelessness, but studiously avoiding the master's eye.
"For a man ez wos brought up on Parsings, Dobell, and Jones, thar don't
appear to be much show nowadays."

The master did not reply. Observing several shades of color chase each
other on Uncle Ben's face, he bent his own gravely over his books. The
act appeared to relieve his companion, who with his eyes still turned
towards the window went on:

"Ef you'd had them books--which you haven't--I had it in my mind to
ask you suthen'. I had an idea of--of--sort of reviewing my eddication.
Kinder going over the old books agin--jist to pass the time. Sorter
running in yer arter school hours and doin' a little practisin', eh? You
looking on me as an extry scholar--and I payin' ye as sich--but keepin'
it 'twixt ourselves, you know--just for a pastime, eh?"

As the master smilingly raised his head, he became suddenly and
ostentatiously attracted to the window.

"Them jay birds out there is mighty peart, coming right up to the
school-house! I reckon they think it sort o' restful too."

"But if you really mean it, couldn't you use these books, Uncle Ben?"
said the master cheerfully. "I dare say there's little difference--the
principle is the same, you know."

Uncle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell. He
took the book from the master's hand without meeting his eyes, held it
at arm's length, turned it over and then laid it softly down upon the
desk as if it were some excessively fragile article. "Certingly," he
murmured, with assumed reflective ease. "Certingly. The principle's
all there." Nevertheless he was quite breathless and a few beads of
perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank forehead.

"And as to writing, for instance," continued the master with increasing
heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, "you know ANY copy-book
will do."

He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that took it
timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal and hopeless
unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the window and observe
the birds also.

"They're mighty bold--them jays," said Uncle Ben, laying down the pen
with scrupulous exactitude beside the book and gazing at his fingers as
if he had achieved a miracle of delicate manipulation. "They don't seem
to be afeared of nothing, do they?"

There was another pause. The master suddenly turned from the window.
"I tell you what, Uncle Ben," he said w