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. Was he really doing this from a genuine
thirst for knowledge? It was inconsistent with all that Indian Spring
knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions; he was a simple
miner without scientific or technical knowledge; his already slight
acquaintance with arithmetic and the scrawl that served for his
signature were more than sufficient for his needs. Yet it was with this
latter sign-manual that he seemed to take infinite pains.
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