"If I had a fresh-cut pine slab, I could show you how some of it is printed. A slab is a nice slate to scratch verses on—"
The little boy interrupted with this discovery of his own: "Our big wooden shovel is thick. I write on it with a burnt stick. When it is all covered with words, I whittle the writing off in thin shavings. Then I write on the clean wood again."
"That's a bright idea," praised Doby. "I'll try it some time." He carved on the beech:
Zaccheus he
did climb the Tree,
his Lord to see.
The little boy examined it, doubtfully. "Is that poetry?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed," affirmed Doby, pointing out the rhymes. "And that bunch of wavy lines at the bottom are the sycamore-tree that he climbed—in the Bible story, you know."
The little boy did know the Bible story. He showed plainly that he was a friend and acquaintance of the famous Zaccheus. But his eyes traveled from Doby's copy of the primer's illustration to a living sycamore down by the brook and the doubt in them deepened.
Doby hastened to explain: "That's what they call art. I have noticed that poetry and art are sometimes different from the way we might expect them to be. We can't always understand them."