Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes

not another working boy in Boston who was out swimming in the middle of the afternoon. Only once or twice in a summer—on days of unendurable heat, teachers dismissed school, masters closed shops, and the boys ran down to the wharves to swim. Sometimes, like Mr. Lapham's boys, they swam secretly, silently, on Sunday afternoons, but usually only after dusk had fallen and the day's work was over.
    Johnny dove and swam. But it was curious to be alone. He did not like the feeling of being thus cut off from his normal life.
    Yet one thing gave him great pleasure. Once in the water, his bad hand was as good as the other. Swimming, he could forget it.
5
    At first Mrs. Lapham tended to humor the 'poor boy.' As he preferred the birth and death room to the attic with Dove and Dusty, she had let him stay on. He had never in all his life slept in a bed alone—much less a whole room. He wanted to be alone.
    There was one trouble with his new quarters. When Mrs. Lapham came down to start breakfast, she always began by getting him up.
    'Get into your clothes—you lazy boy. Stop by at Deacon Parson's for a quart of milk. Get to the town pump.'
    Soon enough she was addressing him as a 'lazy good-for-nothing,' a 'lug-a-bed,' a 'worthless limb of Satan.' Such words poured out of her absent-mindedly, but never in the old days had she called Johnny such names.
    The boy least necessary in the shop had always done chores. Now both Dove and Dusty were more valuable than Johnny Tremain. Every morning he put on the heavy wooden yoke, trudged over to North Square for drinking water. Now for the first time he learned to handle a broom properly. He carried in charcoal for the annealing furnace in the shop and wood for the cooking hearth in the kitchen, and as he moved restlessly about doing (and often failing to do) this humble work, Cilla and Isannah watched him and said little. Never a single insult. He had made it clear to them he wanted to be left alone.
    Madge and Dorcas found innumerable small tasks for him, now he 'wasn't doing anything.' Once fat Madge made him sit before her, holding a skein of yarn from which she wound a ball. He was miserable with his crippled hand stretched out for all the world to see. When she mentioned it, he threw the yarn at her head and walked off.
    One day Mr. Lapham called to him and led him to a bench under the old willow behind the coal house. The old man had never once berated him for Sabbath-breaking, never reminded him how often he had pointed out that pride goeth before a fall.
    'My boy,' he said mildly, 'soon it will be September. Summer is over.' Johnny nodded. 'And I feel I must talk with you. When I signed for you, Johnny, there was a mutual contract between your mother and myself. She's dead, so the contract is now between you and me. I promised to feed and clothe you, keep you in good discipline, and as far as your capacity permitted to teach you the silversmith's arts and mysteries.... I ... I never had a boy so quick to teach, but ... And you promised to serve me diligently for seven years, to keep my secrets and my honor. You've done all that, Johnny. But ... but now ... I can't keep my contract with you. I can't teach a cripple-handed boy to be a silversmith.'
    Johnny said nothing.
    'Mrs. L. is right,' the old man went on.
    'You mean she wants you to get rid of me?'
    'Not exactly, but she does think it is an extravagance for a poor household to keep a boy just for chores. But I've told her'—there was an unexpected glint of determination in the groping old eyes—'I've told her as long as you wish you are to stay with us. I won't ever ... turn you out. I mind the time your mother came to my shop with you ... she was a sweet lady ... very genteel. She said your heart was fastened on being a silversmith. She said you was a bright boy—you always was that. Now, Johnny, it's for your own good I'm talking to you. You've got to learn another way of supporting yourself. I want you to go