Whatever happened to him, and whatever length of days or sort of weather was produced by the almanac, the cardinal rule was that he should be at home before dark.
John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wonder sometimes whether he was n't still in them.
Of course, John had nothing to do all the evening, after his "chores,"--except little things.While he drew his chair up to the table in order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on his slate or his book, the women of the house also sat by the table knitting and sewing.The head of the house sat in his chair, tipped back against the chimney; the hired man was in danger of burning his boots in the fire.John might be deep in the excitement of a bear story, or be hard at writing a "composition" on his greasy slate; but whatever he was doing, he was the only one who could always be interrupted.It was he who must snuff the candles, and put on a stick of wood, and toast the cheese, and turn the apples, and crack the nuts.He knew where the fox-and-geese board was, and he could find the twelve-men-Morris.Considering that he was expected to go to bed at eight o'clock, one would say that the opportunity for study was not great, and that his reading was rather interrupted.There seemed to be always something for him to do, even when all the rest of the family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a New England household.
No wonder that John was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had been flying about while the others had been yawning before the fire.He would like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid it would become as the night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, to mend his sled, to finish that chapter.Why should he go away from that bright blaze, and the company that sat in its radiance, to the cold and solitude of his chamber? Why did n't the people who were sleepy go to bed?
How lonesome the old house was; how cold it was, away from that great central fire in the heart of it; how its timbers creaked as if in the contracting pinch of the frost; what a rattling there was of windows, what a concerted attack upon the clapboards; how the floors squeaked, and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame of the candle from the boy's hand.How he shivered, as he paused at the staircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow, upon the stripped forest, through which he could hear the wind raving in a kind of fury, and up at the black flying clouds, amid which the young moon was dashing and driven on like a frail shallop at sea.And his teeth chattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets, and drew himself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox in his hole.
For a little time he could hear the noises downstairs, and an occasional laugh; he could guess that now they were having cider, and now apples were going round; and he could feel the wind tugging at the house, even sometimes shaking the bed.But this did not last long.He soon went away into a country he always delighted to be in:
a calm place where the wind never blew, and no one dictated the time of going to bed to any one else.I like to think of him sleeping there, in such rude surroundings, ingenious, innocent, mischievous, with no thought of the buffeting he is to get from a world that has a good many worse places for a boy than the hearth of an old farmhouse, and the sweet, though undemonstrative, affection of its family life.
But there were other evenings in the boy's life, that were different from these at home, and one of them he will never forget.It opened a new world to John, and set him into a great flutter.It produced a revolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder if greased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; and he wished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as he walked away from it, what was the effect of round patches on the portion of his trousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and if patches were quite stylish, even on everyday trousers.And he began to be very much troubled about the parting of his hair, and how to find out on which side was the natural part.
The evening to which I refer was that of John's first party.He knew the girls at school, and he was interested in some of them with a different interest from that he took in the boys.He never wanted to "take it out" with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight, and he instinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he was with them.He would help a timid little girl to stand erect and slide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff with cold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples into which he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in two his lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy.Had he not some of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate, spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home? And yet the grand sentiment of life was little awakened in John.He liked best to be with boys, and their rough play suited him better than the amusements of the shrinking, fluttering, timid, and sensitive little girls.John had not learned then that a spider-web is stronger than a cable; or that a pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great deal easier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry "enough."John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished the feat of "going home with a girl" afterwards; and he had been growing into the habit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticing how Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as much if Cynthia was absent as when she was present.But there was very little sentiment in all this, and nothing whatever to make John blush at hearing her name.