Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Page B

you, now that you must be of value to him?'
    'I've a bad hand.'
    'Let me see it.'
    He did not want to show his hand, but the masters always insisted. He would take it out of the pocket where he always kept it, with a flourish, display it to the sickening curiousity of the master, apprentices, journeymen, lady customers. After such an experience he would sometimes loiter and swim for the rest of the day. Sometimes he would grit his teeth and plunge headlong into the next shop.
    He rarely bothered to look at the signs over the door which indicated what work was done inside. A pair of scissors for a tailor, a gold lamb for a wool weaver, a basin for a barber, a painted wooden book for a bookbinder, a large swinging compass for an instrument-maker. Although more and more people were learning how to read, the artisans still had signs above their shops, not wishing to lose a possible patron merely because he happened to be illiterate.
    Having been told by one clockmaker he would not suit, Johnny walked in on two more and got the same answer.
    A butcher (his sign was a gilded ox skull) would have employed him, but the idea of slaughtering animals sickened him. He was a fine craftsman to the tips of his fingers—even to the tips of his maimed hand.
    Now he never came home for the hearty midday dinner. Mrs. Lapham, Madge, and Dorcas were always pointing out how much he ate and how little he did. He knew Mrs. Lapham was looking around for a grown-up silversmith who would come in as a partner for Grandpa, and she had said (looking straight at Johnny) she would not ask him to sleep in the attic with the two boys. He was to have the birth and death room. 'I declare,' she said one day, 'no business can be run with just a feeble old man and three of the most worthless boys in Boston—eating their heads off.'
    Seems she was negotiating with a Mr. Tweedie—newly arrived from Baltimore. He had arrived alone, but she must make sure he really was a bachelor or a widower. Obviously, whatever partner she found for her father-in-law must marry one of her 'poor fatherless girls.' The shop must stay in the family.
    So Johnny ate as little as he could, and did not come home at noon. But someone would usually slip a piece of hard bread, cheese, jerked beef, or salt fish and johnnycake in the pocket of his jacket as it hung on its hook. He knew it was Cilla, but he never spoke to her about it. His unhappiness was so great he felt himself completely cut off from the rest of the world.
    But sometimes, as he lay in the sun on Beacon Hill or Copp's Hill (among the graves), or curled himself upon a coil of rope along a wharf, eating the food she had managed to get for him, he would dream of the great things he would do for her—when he was man-grown. There were three things she longed for—a gold necklace; a gray pony with a basket cart; a little sailboat. He dreamed of himself as successful—rich. Never as the ditch-digger and ragpicker Mrs. Lapham was always suggesting to him.
    Some days there was no food in his pocket. Then he went hungry.
    On one such day, he was strolling up Salt Lane. Here about him and on Union Street were printing offices. It was noon, and all over Boston work had stopped and everyone, except himself, had either gone home for dinner or to one of the famous taverns. Above one tiny shop he saw a sign that attracted him. It was a little man in bright blue coat and red breeches, solemnly gazing at Salt Lane through a spyglass. So this was where the
Boston Observer
was published. The Laphams took no newspaper, but he had heard Mr. Lapham speak of the wicked
Observer
and how it was trying to stir up discontent in Boston, urging the people to revolt against the mild rule of England. The comical little painted man looked so genial, so ready to welcome anyone, that Johnny stepped in.
    He might have guessed he would waste his time. Of course the master would be off for dinner, but because he had liked the painted sign,