“Yes, Mack, help us make him sign it!” chimed in Molly Royce.
“Be quiet, Molly!” replied Marion, putting his impetuous young sister aside with one hand as he strode nearer. “We will see about this. Let go, Lewis! Let go, Mose! Master Hempstead, what’s the matter here?”
The master, who had been kicking hard and hitting right and left at his assailants, recovered his dignity and struck an attitude.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is such ingratitude!” he cried, in injured accents. “These whom I have taught with so great patience, whose dull wits I have fostered, lo, they have lifted up the heel against me!”
“But what is it, Master Hempstead, that they want you to sign?” asked Marion, laughing in spite of himself.
“An exorbitant demand! Preposterous extortion! Stuck under my very nose at the schoolhouse door on an illiterate chip!”
“And he’s got to sign it!” interrupted Mose.
“But what is it? Let’s see it,” said Marion.
With that, Jimmy Hoyt came running with the chip, which, on being read aloud, caused Jonas Sparks and Uncle Amasa Claiborne, who had now come up, to chuckle audibly.
“And I kinder reckon, master, that they was in a fair way to make ye put yer name to it!” cried the old shipwright. “I guess ye better sign it.”
“No, no, but the rising gineration musn’t be incouraged to be sassy!” cried Gaffir Hoyt. “They’re sassy enough now. Give ’em an inch and they’ll take an ell.” Uncle Amasa agreed with him.
“Cut some switches and drub the young scamps,” said Uncle Amasa.
Public opinion being thus divided, every one, including Milly Ayer, looked to Marion for the guiding word. Already this little community had come to rely upon his judgment in emergencies.
The young captain laughed good-humoredly. “I don’t want to set my word before that of my elders,” he said, “but drubbing isn’t always the best medicine. The boys have been rough and hasty. But from all accounts, Master Hempstead hasn’t set them quite so good an example of late as we wish he would. Lewis, you and Mose and Molly must beg Master Hempstead’s forgiveness for misusing him. If they do that, you will overlook it, master, will you not?”
“Hey, what? Forgive them!” cried the still agitated pedagogue. “Forgive them! Well, anything but their bad spelling! Anything but that!”