no responsive ambition in John Broom.

As to his fitness to be an errand boy, he could not carry a message from
the kitchen to the cowhouse without stopping by the way to play with the
yard-dog, and a hedgehog in the path would probably have led him astray,
if Thomasina had had a fit and he had been despatched for the doctor.

During school hours he spent most of his time under the fool's cap when
he was not playing truant. With his schoolmates he was good friends. If
he was seldom out of mischief, he was seldom out of temper. He could
beat any boy at a foot race (without shoes); he knew the notes and nests
of every bird that sang, and whatever an old pocket-knife is capable of,
that John Broom could and would do with it for his fellows.

Miss Betty had herself tried to teach him to read, and she continued to
be responsible for his religious instruction. She had hoped to stir up
his industry by showing him the Bible, and promising that when he could
read it he should have it for his "very own." But he either could not or
would not apply himself, so the prize lay unearned in Thomasina's trunk.
But he would listen for any length of time to Scripture stories, if
they were read or told him, especially to the history of Elisha, and the
adventures of the judges.

Indeed, since he could no longer be shut up in the drying-ground,
Thomasina had found that he was never so happy and so safe as when he
was listening to tales, and many a long winter evening he lay idle on
the kitchen hearth, with his head on the sheep dog, whilst the more
industrious Thomasina plied her knitting-needles, as she sat in the
inglenook, with the flickering firelight playing among the plaits of her
large cap, and told tales of the country side.

Not that John Broom was her only hearer. Annie "the lass" sat by the
hearth also, and Thomasina took care that she did not "sit with her
hands before her." And a little farther away sat the cowherd.

He had a sleeping-room above the barn, and took his meals in the house.
By Miss Betty's desire he always went in to family prayers after supper,
when he sat as close as possible to the door, under an uncomfortable
consciousness that Thomasina did not think his boots clean enough for
the occasion and would find something to pick off the carpet as she
followed him out, however hardly he might have used the door-scraper
beforehand.

It might be a difficult matter to decide which he liked best, beer or
John Broom