Here the professor launched into a second oration, longer than the
first. In conclusion, he said: "And so, Miss Hannah, we will give you what work we have to put out. And
you must try and knock along and do as well as you can this season. And
before the next the poor child will die, and the people will forget all
about it, and employ you again."
"But the child is not a-going to die!" burst forth Hannah, in
exasperation. "If he was the son of rich parents, whose hearts lay in
him, and who piled comforts and luxuries and elegances upon him, and
fell down and worshiped him, and had a big fortune and a great name to
leave him, and so did everything they possibly could to keep him alive,
he'd die! But being what he is, a misery and shame to himself and all
connected with him, he'll live! Yes, half-perished as he is with cold
and famine, he'll live! Look at him now!"
The professor did turn and look at the little, thin, wizen-faced boy who
lay upon the bed, contentedly sucking his skinny thumb, and regarding
the speaker with big, bright, knowing eyes, that seemed to say: "Yes, I mean to suck my thumb and live!"
"To tell you the truth, I think so, too," said the professor, scarcely
certain whether he was replying to the words of Hannah or to the looks
of the child.
It is certain that the dread of death and the desire of life is the very
earliest instinct of every animate creature. Perhaps this child was
endowed with excessive vitality. Certainly, the babe's persistence in
living on "under difficulties" might have been the germ of that enormous
strength and power of will for which the man was afterwards so noted.
The professor kept his word with Hannah, and brought her some work. But
the little that he could afford to pay for it was not sufficient to
supply one-fourth of Hannah's necessities.
At last came a day when her provisions were all gone. And Hannah locked
the child up alone in the hut and set off to walk to Baymouth, to try to
get some meal and bacon on credit from the country shop where she had
dealt all her life.
Baymouth was a small port, at the mouth of a small bay making up from
the Chesapeake. It had one church, in charge of the Episcopal minister
who had baptized Nora's child. And it had one large, country store, kept
by a general dealer named Nutt, who had for sale everything to eat,
drink, wear, or wield, from sugar and tea to meat and fish; from linen
cambric to linsey-woolsey; from bonnets and hats to boots and shoes;
from new milk to old whisky; from fresh eggs to stale cheese; and from
needles and thimbles to plows and harrows.