It was also rumored that Cressy's oral rendering of Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey" and Burke's "Indictment of Warren Hastings," had beguiled him one evening from improving an opportunity to "plug" one of Harrison's boundary "raiders." The master shared in Cressy's glory in the public eye.

But although Mrs.
McKinstry did not materially change her attitude of tolerant good-nature towards him, he was painfully conscious that she looked upon her daughter's studies and her husband's interests in them as a weakness that might in course of time produce infirmity of homicidal purpose and become enervating of eye and trigger-finger.

And when Mr.McKinstry got himself appointed as school-trustee, and was thereby obliged to mingle with certain Eastern settlers,--colleagues on the Board,--this possible weakening of the old sharply drawn sectional line between "Yanks" and themselves gave her grave doubts of Hiram's physical stamina.
"The old man's worrits hev sorter shook out a little of his sand," she had explained.

On those evenings when he attended the Board, she sought higher consolation in prayer meeting at the Southern Baptist Church, in whose exercises her Northern and Eastern neighbors, thinly disguised as "Baal" and "Astaroth," were generally overthrown and their temples made desolate.
If Uncle Ben's progress was slower, it was no less satisfactory.
Without imagination and even without enthusiasm, he kept on with a dull laborious persistency.

When the irascible impatience of Rupert Filgee at last succumbed to the obdurate slowness of his pupil, the master himself, touched by Uncle Ben's perspiring forehead and perplexed eyebrows, often devoted the rest of the afternoon to a gentle elucidation of the mysteries before him, setting copies for his heavy hand, or even guiding it with his own, like a child's, across the paper.
At times the appalling uselessness of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded him of Rupert's taunting charge.