"I don't know," said Mittie; "that's what she says. How long did you go to school?"
"Me? Oh, off and on 'bout two year. The old man was always poorly, and Maw, she had to work out, till me an' the boys done got big enough to work. 'Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids. Don't I talk like other fellers, Mittie?"
"You talk better than some," said Mittie loyally.
After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully. He thought of the few educated people he knew—the boss at the shops, the preacher up on Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade. Yes, there was a difference. Being clean and wearing good clothes were not the only things.
When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.
One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.
"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter."
Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.
"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him."
"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.