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You climb aboard with him, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. The first few minutes passes in awkward silence. The carter will occasionally look back at the two of you, regarding you with not a little hostility for the sudden favor his master seems to have afforded you. His master, the reeve, is more nonchalant. He occupies himself with a game of droughts, seemingly playing against an invisible foe, and catching your gaze once or twice upon the board, soon invites you to play against him.
Draughts is a game that every child knows. It can be played with little more than some pebbles and a checkerboard of any kind: wood, cloth, even lines scratched out in the dirt when necessary. You are no by no means the best at the game--that honor used to belong to Mabel, until she was defeated by a reluctant Gordon (who seems to possess a natural genius for it).
Here, however, it is less a competition and more an excuse to talk freely. As the game progresses, the reeve waxes poetical about its allegorical meaning, how the pieces are all the same and only when one reaches the other side does it become better than its fellows. He glances meaningfully at you when says this and suddenly brings up the hopes for future which you shared with his daughter (and which she had apparently shared with him). He asks if you were truly serious about those hopes, scowling severely at the board. You reply that you were. He directs his scowl to you. And then, to your surprise, he does not dismiss or insult you but, looking back at the board, mumbles that he heard something from the other fishermen, that you were the best sailor among them. Here you flush a little, but make no attempt at modesty, for it is not false what he says. You know yourself what prodigious talent you possess.
The reeve comments on your silence that is a good for a young man to have ambition and that without ambition one life is as another and each day a tiresome repetition of activities. He then mentions your uncle. He knows you plan on bringing him onto your boat. You remark that he is well informed, to which he replies that as the reeve, all men's business is his business, doubly when it concerns his own interests. He goes on to say that he regards men like your uncle as fallen men, for "when one has begged for one's livelihood, the ambition is forever lost". He does not believe such men can change. He believes it is better to separate oneself from such company, even the closest friend or ally, if one would make something of themselves. Then, returning again to "his interests", he says that he fears your uncle poses a risk to his boat and that your rents this season should reflect this.
To this you reply:
>That he can do as he wills, but your uncle will stay
>That it is only a temporary measure, no more than a season at most
>That he is wrong about your uncle and you will prove it so
>Write-in