"You shet right up, Tom!" commanded his wife. "Ain't it nuthin' to you that your son grows up wild and uneddicated?"
"But he had no right to call us savages, Ma," protested Billy.
"Oh, hadn't he then! Well, who up and deliberately stole his horse, I'd like to know?" Mrs. Wilson held her breath waiting for the answer.
"Nobody stole his horse," replied Billy. "The poor thing was so lean an' hungry that it weaved when it walked; all we did was sneak it out o' the school-yard an' hide it where there was good pasture."
"Well, maybe that ain't stealin' it, but if it ain't what would you call it, Willium?"
"I'd call it bein' kind to dumb animals," spoke up Wilson, his eyes meeting the angry ones of his wife.
"Listen, Ma," said Billy gently. "That old Johnston was awful mean to us kids, there's no mistake about that. He whipped us fer nothin', an' what's worse, he was always sneerin' at us fer being low-born an' ignorant, an' that meant sayin' things ag'in our folks. But we was willin' to stand all that, cause we'd promised Teacher Stanhope that we'd do our best to put up with the teacher in his place. But, Ma, if you could'a seen that poor ol' horse, so starved that every rib showed like the ridges in your wash-board, lookin' over that school-yard fence at the long grass an' beggin' with his hungry eyes fer jest a bite—"
Billy paused and rolled a bread crumb. When he looked up his eyes were dark. "Anse has told you that it was me who sneaked him out o' the yard, an' led him away where he could feed an' rest an' get the sores made by the hard saddle an' hickory healed, an' Anse didn't lie fer once. I did do it, an' I'd do it ag'in.
"What's more, Ma, that ol' horse is goin' to stay right where he is, belly-deep in clover, till it gets so cold we'll have to stable him. Then he's goin' to have all the good hay an' oats he wants."
Mrs. Wilson could scarcely believe her ears. "You don't mean that havin' took him you had any thoughts of keepin' him, Willium?" she managed to say.