“No; Francis would be in college,” her father rejoined.
“What’s college?” Berry demanded.
“Why, Berenice Isabel Arnold!” exclaimed her father in amazement. “I will have to turn schoolmaster and keep you shut in the house with books if you really do not know the meaning of ‘college’!”
Berry shook her head: her mouth was filled with hot potato, and she could not speak.
“College is a school where young men like Francis learn more important things than can be taught to younger boys,” explained her father. “And I have made up my mind, Berry; to-morrow your regular lessons begin.”
“Oh, Father! Not like the school at home?” Berry pleaded. “Not geography and maps, and arithmetic and sums, and grammar and compositions?”
“Exactly! It will never do for a little Yankee girl, even if she does live in Tennessee, to grow up without an education. School will begin to-morrow!” replied Mr. Arnold.
“Then Mollie Bragg will have to go to school with me,” Berry declared.
CHAPTER II
MOLLIE BRAGG
The nearest neighbors to the Arnolds were a family named Bragg, who lived in a cabin some three miles distant, near the road leading to Corinth. The Braggs’ cabin was not a comfortable, convenient home such as the Arnolds had made their own mountain cabin. The doors of the Braggs’ cabin sagged from clumsy leather hinges; the floor of the rough porch was broken here and there, so that anyone entering the house had to be careful where he stepped. Mr. Bragg announced each day that he was “gwine ter try mighty hard to find time to fix that po’ch, an’ mend up the roof.” But days, weeks, and months went by and no repairs were made, although Mr. Bragg spent long hours on the porch, tilted back against the house in an old chair, smoking, and, as he would promptly explain to any visitor, “tryin’ to rest up.”