was a fight for a real principle, and as he gradually grew accustomed to the lack of a selfish motive, he began to be very glad indeed that he had made the fight as he had, for its own sake and the content he felt in knowing that he had not been a coward and unfaithful.
April came at last, as long-looked-for seasons finally do, of course, and Dr. Ferris came back during the first week, as he had said be would. Saturday evening, therefore, Neil called on the old gentleman to make his report. He had not imagined how hard this little matter would 
Carrying out the contract. be, but he found it very hard indeed. He could never remember, in fact, just what he said about the day he had made his breach of contract, or why he had concluded that to excuse himself as sick would not be square. Neither could he recall what the doctor had replied; but it ended just as he had expected. He told the whole story of his failure, and then, when the doctor asked him a great many questions, he answered them, though he did not understand just why Dr. Ferris asked so many or such particular ones about points he had not thought important. Neither could he understand why he wanted to know whether Neil’s father and mother had been told of his failure to keep his contract, or if he had mentioned it to his sister, and a number of other questions that Neil thought had nothing to do with the matter. He did remember that he had considered the old gentleman a little mean because he had seemed to take a pleasure in having him give the particulars of his failure, which he might easily have seen was painful enough a matter to Neil. Then, at the end, the doctor was quite unnecessarily insistent, Neil thought, that he should sign a document which the old gentleman himself had prepared, acknowledging that he had forfeited all right to wages. But even this Neil bravely did, and did with all the show of proud cheerfulness he could muster.
And then he went home and told his father and mother about it all, and was a good deal embarrassed because his mother cried about it, and because his father, without saying a word, seemed to forget his paper for half the evening afterward to look across its top at his small son.
Before a week had passed, however, Neil had dropped into his usual habits, except that he was rarely late to breakfast, and that somehow it seemed easier now to do some of the duties about home and at school than it had once seemed. He thought this must be because he had found out more about what it was to work really hard. Of course his heart ached somtimes about the pony, but he only resolved that some day he would earn the money to buy him, and he determined to be patient.
Aud then, one Saturday morning, just a week after Dr, Ferris’s home-coming, Neil was bringing in the coal from the bin far the kitchen fire, when his mother called him to the front of the house, and, when he came, laughingly pushed him ahead of her out the front door to look at something before the steps. And there on the