The two men rose, and when alone began at once to talk of the
coming election in the fall of 1856 and the endless troubles arising out
of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The boy who had been the subject of their conversation was slowly
becoming used to novel surroundings and the influence they exerted. Ann
talked to him at times of his mother, but he had the disinclination to
speak of the dead which most children have, and had in some ways been
kept so much of a child as to astonish his aunt. Neither Leila nor any
one could have failed to like him and his gentle ways, and as between
him and the village boys she knew Leila preferred this clever, if too
timid, cousin. So far they had had no serious quarrels. When she rode
with the Squire, John wandered in the woods, enjoying solitude, and
having some appreciative relation to nature, the great pine woods, the
strange noises of the breaking ice in the river, the sunset skies.
Among the village boys with whom at the rector's small school and in
the village John was thrown, he liked least the lad McGregor, who had
now been invited to coast or skate with the Grey Pine cousins. Tom had
the democratic boy-belief that very refined manners imply lack of some
other far more practical qualities, and thus to him and the Westways
boys John Penhallow was simply an absurd Miss Nancy kind of lad, and it
was long after the elders of the little town admired and liked him that
the boys learned to respect him.
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