, which I
understood.

"Oh! I see, Turkey," I said. "You mean I ought to ask my father."

"Yes, to be sure, I do mean that," answered Turkey.

"Then it's as good as done," I returned. "I will ask him to-night."

"She's a good girl, Elsie," was all Turkey's reply.

How it happened I cannot now remember, but I know that, after all, I
did not ask my father, and Granny Gregson's cow had no bite either off
the glebe or the farm. And Turkey's reflections concerning the mother
he had to take care of having been interrupted, the end to which they
were moving remained for the present unuttered.

I soon grew quite strong again, and had neither plea nor desire for
exemption from school labours. My father also had begun to take me in
hand as well as my brother Tom; and what with arithmetic and Latin
together, not to mention geography and history, I had quite enough to
do, and quite as much also as was good for me.

CHAPTER XV

A New Companion

[Illustration]

During this summer, I made the acquaintance at school of a boy called
Peter Mason. Peter was a clever boy, from whose merry eye a sparkle
was always ready to break. He seldom knew his lesson well, but, when
_kept in_ for not knowing it, had always learned it before any of the
rest had got more than half through. Amongst those of his own standing
he was the acknowledged leader in the playground, and was besides
often invited to take a share in the amusements of the older boys, by
whom he was petted because of his cleverness and obliging
disposition. Beyond school hours, he spent his time in all manner of
pranks. In the hot summer weather he would bathe twenty times a day,
and was as much at home in the water as any dabchick. And that was how
I came to be more with him than was good for me.

There was a small river not far from my father's house, which at a
certain point was dammed back by a weir of large stones to turn part
of it aside into a mill-race. The mill stood a little way down, under
a steep bank. It was almost surrounded with trees, willows by the
water's edge, and birches and larches up the bank. Above the dam was a
fine spot for bathing, for you could get any depth you liked--from two
feet to five or six; and here it was that most of the boys of the
village bathed, and I with them. I cannot recall the memory of those
summer days without a gush of delight gurgling over my heart, just as
the water used to gurgle over the stones of the dam. It was a q