Part 9

He burst into tears, and was about to tell his mother and Nanette all of his adventures, when he remembered the fairy's caution, and the awful fate which awaited him if he should disclose his meeting with her. So he only explained that he had got lost, and had to leave Skip in some woods of whose situation he was ignorant, and that he had come home on foot through strange and curious ways.

"Poor boy!" said his mother, kissing him fondly, and feeling glad to see him appear so singularly gentle and downcast, although she was very sorry for him. "He is crying because he is so sorry about Skip. When Peter comes home, we will send him off at once to get Skip."

But it was in vain that Peter, following Rick's directions as far as the bewildered boy could give any, searched the woods for the pony. Long after dark, he came home without having seen a trace of her.

The next morning, Skip was found tied just outside the castle-gate; and no one about the castle could tell how she came there, unless it was Rick, who was certain, in his own mind, that it was Zenia's doings.

Before the dew was off the grass, Rick mounted the pony.

"Now, my love," said his mother, "do not ride far this morning, for fear you will get lost again in these wild woods. Keep to the main road, or I shall never dare to trust you away from the castle again without Peter behind you."

"I shall never go into the woods again," said Rick, in a tone of decision, which quite re-assured his mother. "I am going over to Herr Schuler's, to get him to teach me to read and write and cipher, and to train me with his long stick."

His mother could not believe her ears; and, while she was collecting her wits, Rick rode away, not in his usual gay manner, but looking as serious as a judge.

When he came to Herr Schuler's house, he dismounted, and knocked at the door.

Herr Schuler himself appeared.

"Ah, my little man!" said he, "what can I do for you?"

"I want you to teach me," said Rick.

"Indeed! Did your mother send you to me?"

"No, sir: I have come because I wanted to."

"Are not you the boy who dislikes schools and teachers so much?"

"I was that boy; but I am a boy now who wants to learn, and no one can teach me but you."

"I must go over and see your mother, then, and find out about it," replied Herr Schuler, who was much perplexed.

"But I want to commence this morning, and have brought the books that my mother and Nanette tried to make me study in."

Hereupon Rick ran and took off a little satchel which he had hung upon his saddle.

"This looks like business," said Herr Schuler. "If you keep on as you have begun, it will not take long to make a scholar of you."

He took Rick in, set him down at a little table, and gave him an easy lesson to learn, in spelling. It was soon learned, and then followed one column of the multiplication table. After that, Rick wrote the words of a copy over half a dozen times, very carefully. Then he read a short story aloud. Herr Schuler said that was enough for once; and Rick went home feeling very proud and happy, to tell his mother and Nanette what Herr Schuler said,--that there was now no reason why he should not become as good a scholar as any in the whole country.

His mother and Nanette praised and encouraged him; but they said behind his back, that this new freak would not continue long. They were greatly mistaken. Day after day Rick went to Herr Schuler's, and learned his lessons faithfully: more than that, he seemed to enjoy them as much as he had previously enjoyed his idleness. One reason of this was, that Herr Schuler had a way of making lessons so interesting that they seemed like play, and he did not give too long tasks.

After Rick had been to school about a fortnight, he lingered after he had been dismissed.

"Do you want to speak with me, Rick?" asked Herr Schuler.

"I only want to ask you," replied Rick, "when you are going to use your long stick upon me?"

"What!" exclaimed Herr Schuler, in great glee, thinking Rick was joking. "You don't want a whipping, do you?"

"Yes, I do!" replied Rick soberly and emphatically.

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Herr Schuler, in amazement.

"Why not?" replied Rick. "I never shall make a man, if you don't whip me some; and I want you to begin right off."

It was with much difficulty that Herr Schuler restrained his smiles. "Well, well, Rick! if you are really willing"--

"Willing!" interrupted Rick, "I am in a great hurry."

"Very well: perhaps there are some things that you will learn better by the use of my long stick, than you will from books or lectures; so look out for a whipping soon."

Rick hurried home in high spirits, to tell his mother and Nanette that he was getting on so well that Herr Schuler was going to begin switching him with his long stick, to teach him some things that he could not learn out of books.

"My dear child!" exclaimed his mother. "It is because you have never known what a whipping is, that you are in such glee. What have you been doing to displease Herr Schuler? Tell me at once. I will go directly and ask him to pardon you and spare his rod."

"No, no!" cried Rick excitedly. "If you do, I will never forgive you!"

"But do you know, my child, that a whipping hurts?"

"Of course I do! Don't I switch Skip with my whip, to make her go faster, and to mind what I tell her? And haven't I switched myself with it, too, for fun? And haven't I seen boys whipped ever so many times, and crying and dancing about? But I shall neither dance nor cry, because I shall like it."

"What a strange boy!" said his mother, laughing. "But I will trust Herr Schuler not to do my boy any injury, and we will see if you like the rod so well after you have felt it."

The next day, when Rick made his appearance, Herr Schuler said,--

"This is the third or fourth time you have been late, my boy. One of the worst of faults is to be habitually late. Suppose we apply a little birch, to strengthen your memory of this fact?"

So Herr Schuler went to a little closet in one corner of the room, and took down a long, smooth birch switch, from a nail upon which it was hanging.

Rick's eyes glistened with anticipation, and he began to pull off his jacket.

"Oh! you needn't take off your jacket," said Herr Schuler.

"Yes," answered Rick: "that's the way Peter makes his boy do, when he whips him."

Herr Schuler whizzed the rod through the air with a great flourish and noise, but brought it down as lightly as possible upon Rick's back.

"You are only making believe!" exclaimed Rick, with a sort of indignation at the sham. "Such a whipping as that will never make a man of me."

Upon this, Herr Schuler laid on with a will, determined to give Rick so much of the stick that he would never again plead for a whipping. But the little hero never winced.

"Will that do?" asked the master at last, in almost a tone of entreaty.

"Perhaps it will do for this time," replied Rick; "but it's no more than a respectable whipping. Now I'm ready for my lessons, and I'll try never to be late again."

"Bravo!" cried Herr Schuler: "at this rate, I will soon put you in a way to become such a man as your country will be proud of."

But Herr Schuler's resolution failed him. Although he had whipped many a rough and heedless scholar into better manners by his long stick, his kind heart and his just soul recoiled from the thought of punishing so steady and earnest a boy as Rick had become, for trivial faults of which the boy himself was unconscious. It was Rick himself who next referred to the rod.

"It is two weeks since I have had a birch lesson," he said.

"Ah! h'm!" replied Herr Schuler, getting up and going to the closet very reluctantly. "So you want another birch lesson, so soon?"

He took down the stick, and then resumed his seat in front of Rick.

"What was that you were telling little Jean Pettis, when you first came this morning? Did you not say that you had seen an elephant as high as my barn, and that you rode upon his back with about a hundred other children?"

"Well, he was a very large elephant."

"Was he as high as my barn?"

"Why, he was almost as high, I think."

"Look out of the window at the barn, and tell me, truly as you can, about how high you really think the elephant would reach."

Rick looked out, and, after a careful examination, said, with rather an ashamed look, that he thought he would reach about to the top of the barn-door.

"Very good," said Herr Schuler; "and now think, and tell me truly, about how many children you really suppose there were on the elephant's back."

After thinking a while, Rick said, with a deep blush, that he was not sure that there were more than twenty-five.

"Very well," said Herr Schuler: "if you go on at this rate, do you expect to grow up a reliable man, whose word can be depended upon? Take off your jacket!"

"There!" he continued, after he had given Rick a number of sharp blows, "will that make you remember to be more truthful in your statements?"

"I guess it will help," replied Rick; "but if I find myself talking so carelessly again, I will tell you, and take another whipping to help my memory."

He was as good as his word: he came to Herr Schuler several times after that, with the information that he had not told the exact truth, and took a whipping for it.

Only once, however, did Herr Schuler whip him with a right good will of his own; and that was after he had paid a visit at the castle, and heard Rick, several times, speak disrespectfully to his mother.

For instance, when his mother said she thought she should have a branch cut from one of the trees near the castle, because it shaded Rick's window too much, Rick said,--

"A branch! I guess I'll have that whole tree down, or nothing; it's only a bother, anyway; it not only darkens the window, but it spoils the view out of the window. I'll have the tree cut down to the ground!"

Herr Schuler was so polite a man that he appeared to take no notice of Rick's independent remarks; but the next day, he said to him,--

"If you want a good whipping now, young man, you can have it, and I can put it on with a good will."

"All right," replied Rick very cheerfully: "what is it for?"

Herr Schuler then told him how sorry he had been to find that he was in the habit of speaking disrespectfully to his mother, and to other elders at home.

"Why, I didn't know there was any harm in that," replied Rick, in unfeigned surprise. Thereupon Herr Schuler gave him a very decided little lecture upon the danger of growing up without habits of respect and politeness for others in word and action. At the end of the lecture, he gave Rick so smart a whipping, that he was fully satisfied for that time.

By the end of the summer, Rick had made such progress, that his father, who had been away from home for several months on important business, was completely astonished at the change in his son, when he came to take his family back to the city.

One of the best changes in Rick was the improvement in his manners. Herr Schuler's little lectures, and the way in which Rick had insisted upon having them impressed upon his mind with the long stick, according to the hints given by the fairy, had worked a complete transformation: he had, even in this short time, become a very gentlemanly boy, careful to do right for the sake of doing right, and thoughtful of others' comfort.

During the following winter, he made great progress at the grand school at the capital, to which he was recommended by Herr Schuler; and the carefulness, both in lessons and deportment, which he had already learned, helped him even more than his natural brightness. He was so conscious of this himself, that, whenever he was asked how he came to be so good a scholar, and why he was always so polite and thoughtful, he answered,--

"Herr Schuler taught me how to study and to be mannerly."

As his mother's health was poor, the next summer, it was decided that she should go to the seaside instead of the castle; and Rick spent the summer there with her and Nanette, and was a great comfort to them.

The following summer, however, his mother's health being fully restored, they went back to the castle; and, soon after their arrival, Herr Schuler was invited to pay them a visit with his wife and daughter.

Rick had now become a tall, manly youth, and would have smiled incredulously at one of Nanette's fairy-stories. He knew that there were not, and never had been, any fairies; but he had, for a good while, been greatly perplexed about the woman in red and yellow whom he met in the forest, and who had so cunningly induced him to go to school to Herr Schuler.

In the evening, he said that, if they liked, he would tell them a curious story, which, although it would convince his mother and Nanette and Herr Schuler that he had been no such wonderful boy as they had thought him, was well worth hearing.

He then told them all about his losing his way among the mountains; his meeting with the woman in red and yellow clothing, whom he had believed to be a fairy; the wonderful appearance of the bright and airy giant who had advanced towards him with a whip in his hand, saying, "Ho! ho! ho! ho!" the supposed fairy's terrible warnings and good advice, and how singularly the way out of the mountains had opened before him.

Herr Schuler laughed loud and long.

"So that was the secret of your wonderful docility!" he exclaimed. "As for the giant figure, it was nothing but the mirage which is frequently seen in these mountains: it was a magnified reflection of Rick Lordelle upon the vapor in front of him."

"But how came the figure to have a long whip in his hand?" inquired Rick.

"You must have had a stick in your own hand."

"Oh, yes! I carried my riding-whip in my left hand, and the giant appeared to have a whip in his right hand. But how came the giant to say 'Ho! ho! ho! ho!'?"

"It was, without doubt, the echo of your sobs, from the ledge near you."

"And as for the fairy," said Herr Schiller's daughter, "she was one of the band of gypsies who passed through here about that time; and the smoke you saw in the woods, came from their camp. I remember this woman very well. I saw her the day before you met her, and she had that yellow satin skirt and red waist in a bundle of old clothes she carried: I gave her the old red silk handkerchief myself, for one of her baskets; and she opened the bundle, to put it in with the rest of the clothes."

"And I saw her too!" exclaimed Rick's mother. "She was here at the castle, and begged me to give her some old clothes in exchange for some of her pretty baskets. She showed me an old embroidered yellow satin skirt, which a lady had given her, and asked me if I could give her a waist to go with it. Knowing how much the gypsies like bright colors, I gave her an old red satin waist, which pleased her greatly."

"Oh, yes!" said Rick; "and now I remember her myself. When I first saw her, she was dressed in an old faded calico: she was about the castle some time, and finally went out of the yard carrying her bundle of old clothes with her. I scarcely looked at her at the time, she appeared to be so uninteresting. Nanette was having great trouble with me that morning, trying to get me to read a lesson; and I told her, that, if she did not stop her noise, or tell me a fairy-story, I would slap her in the face, to which she replied, 'Rick Lordelle, you will surely grow up a disgrace to every one who belongs to you!' I remember this distinctly; because, after Zenia foretold what would happen to me if I kept on in my ways, I recollected Nanette had said something like that to me, when she was so vexed with me in the morning."

"As for the paths opening, that is plain enough," added Herr Schuler. "These little woodland paths seldom appear until you are close to them, and the road that opened between the mountains was in one of those narrow defiles which are quite invisible in the distance. Across that marshy district, there are a great many moss-grown stones, which serve for footing, if any one can tell them from the rest of the bog."

"It does not make any difference now," said Rick, "that Zenia turns out to be only a gypsy; for her warnings were just as true, and her advice just as good, as a real fairy's could have been: but I should not have thought so two years ago, and so I am very glad that I took her for one of Nanette's fairies."

After Pierre had finished reading, they all expressed themselves as much pleased with the story: Johnny was especially enthusiastic.

"I thought you didn't like fairy-stories, Johnny," said Sue.

"I never did like one very much before: but, you see, this fairy didn't turn out to be a fairy after all, and every thing she said was true, and really came to pass, so far as the person reading the story can know; and then, there is a good deal of sense in it from beginning to end; and that's the kind of story I like."

"It's just as good as a fairy-story, I think," said Felix; "because you suppose there is a fairy in it, until the very end, and then when you find it was a gypsy, you like the old gypsy just as well as you would a fairy. The worst of it is, I think it is a very long story for me to learn to read well very soon; and so I'm afraid it will be a good while before I get to Boston."

"I don't think it will take you long to learn to read it well, if you pay good attention to my directions," replied Pierre; "and if you want to get on faster at any time, you have only to give more time to the practice."

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*AT THE COTTAGE.*

Johnny found plenty of time for undisturbed possession of the sky-room, for Felix was always off on his bicycle in the morning on pleasant days; so that, when Johnny preferred to stay at home, he was sure of the time until noon to himself. When he could not persuade "Prof." to accompany him, Felix generally found Harrison Brown quite ready; and since Harrison was a pleasant, well-disposed boy, Mr. Le Bras had given Felix permission to go with him at any time in the morning. As bicycle-riding was vetoed for the afternoon, Felix had various expedients for amusement during that portion of the day, among which were lawn-tennis at a neighbor's, base-ball with some boys on the park towards evening, and other outdoor recreations. In fact, he was in the house so seldom that Johnny experienced very little inconvenience after the first terror at his coming had subsided. And Felix had never behaved well for so many days in his life before, as since his residence with his uncle: his parents would have been greatly pleased and astonished at his unusual affability and tractableness, which were simply the result of the firm, orderly government under which he found himself placed.

Felix had read to Pierre every morning for two weeks, and at the end of that time accompanied his uncle to Boston, the latter having expressed himself satisfied with the test-reading. Johnny had accompanied them, and, as he was quite familiar with Boston, had shown his cousin the principal sights while his father was transacting the business on which he had come. As soon as Mr. Le Bras was at liberty, he took the boys down the harbor, to Nantasket Beach, after which they returned home.

Felix had made so much improvement, during the two weeks, in reading, that he was now quite ready to take part in the evening readings; and this practice, with the standing instructions Pierre had given him, caused him to make constant improvement.

The morning lessons in the fairy-story had been given by Pierre in his own room, which was the spare chamber. The lesson always began by Pierre's reading the portion of the story he wished Felix to read, while Felix listened to him, with the purpose of imitating him as nearly as possible when his turn came. As Pierre was a good elocutionist, he read very finely, changing his voice admirably; so that, by the second or third lesson, Felix had nearly given up the monotone which had helped to make his own reading so painful to hear. By being made to read over any words that sounded indistinct, Felix soon overcame the defects of his enunciation. Pierre made him spell, by dividing into syllables, all the words he could not pronounce. This discipline was kept up also during the evening readings, for Felix's benefit. Of course, the drill rather detracted from the interest of what Felix read; but no one was inclined to complain, except Sue, who had been strictly charged to exhibit no impatience, or say any thing that could discourage Felix or hurt his feelings. He was certainly making a braver attempt to overcome his deficiencies than any one could have expected of him, and his aunt was certain that the example of Rick in the story helped him not a little. "I think," said Sue one day, "that Rick Lordelle was exactly like Felix in every way,--anyhow, as Felix used to be, whenever we went to see him in New York; though I think he's an ever so much better boy now; and I like him first-rate, when he isn't too rough, and don't get to teasing me awful bad."

By the last of July, Mr. Le Bras was able to leave his business for a while, and accompany the family to his brother's seaside cottage. They started off one pleasant morning, with trunks and valises, a very merry company. Mr. Le Bras himself was almost as light-hearted as a boy at getting away from his office: and Pierre, who was a great lover of the sea, by which he had lived when he was a little boy, was full of anticipations of fishing and hunting excursions; he carried his gun in his hand, and had a fishing basket and tackle in his trunk. As for Johnny, Felix, and Sue, of course they were exceedingly happy: Felix and Sue chattered incessantly.

It was a four hours' journey, with one change of cars. They reached the village nearest the cottage about noon, and found Oliver waiting for them with the carriage. As they were getting out of the cars, an enormous dog jumped upon Felix, barking loudly, and then began to bound about him and the rest of the party with every demonstration of joy possible.

"Why, Clyde!" exclaimed Felix. "Yes, it is Clyde! Of course it is! But how did he ever come here? Where did you find him, Oliver?"

"He jumped off the cars one day, and came right over to the cottage," replied Oliver, with a smiling side-glance at Mr. Le Bras.

"Well, now! if that wasn't knowing of him!" said Felix. "But I wonder how he knew which train to take, and how the conductor came to let him stay on, and how he happened to know just what station to get off at?"

"But you've always heard tell, Felix, that dogs are mighty knowin' creatures," returned Oliver, smiling from ear to ear.

"But they're not quite so knowing as that, after all," said Johnny: "there's some other explanation, if we could only find out."

"I'll tell you just how it was, boys," said Mr. Le Bras, as soon as they were all stowed in the roomy two-horse carriage, and Oliver had started off, with Clyde following behind, wagging his tail joyously. "I think I must confess, now"--

"Oh! you did it, did you?" interrupted Sue. "Before I'd have thought"--

"Hush, Sue!" said her mother: "you must not interrupt papa."