"Well then, you best let me be. What I feel he should get, he's goin' to get, and get right. You keep out'a this, Tom Wilson, if you want me to keep on; that's all."
"It don't seem right to wake boys up just to give 'em a whalin', Mary," he protested. "My Ma used to wake me up sometimes, but never to whale me. I'd rather remember—"
"Shut up! I tell yun, I'm goin' to give him the hickory this night or I'm goin' to know the reason why. I'll break that boy of his bad habits er I'll break my arm tryin'. You let me be!"
"I'm not findin' fault with your methods of trainin' boys, Mary," her husband hastened to say. "You're doin' your best by Billy, I know that right well. And Billy is rather a tough stick of first-growth timber to whittle smooth and straight, I know that, too. But the gnarliest hickory makes the best axe-handle, so maybe he'll make a good man some day, with your help."
"Humph! well that bein' so, I'm goin' to help him see the error of his ways this night if ever I did," she promised grimly.
Something like a muffled chuckle came from behind the stairway door, but the good woman, intent on her grievance, did not hear it. Wilson heard, however, and let the boot-jack fall to the floor with a clatter. He picked it up and carried it over to its accustomed peg on the wall, whistling softly the tune which he had whistled to Billy in the old romping, astride-neck days:
Oh, you'd better be up, and away, lad.
You better be up and away!
There is danger here in the glade, lad,
It's a heap of trouble you've made, lad—
So you'd better be up and away!
Over beside the table, Mrs. Wilson watched him from somber eyes.
"That's right!" she sighed. "Whistle! It shows all you care. That boy could do anythin' he wanted to do an' you wouldn't say a word; no, not a word!"
Wilson did not answer. He was listening for the stairs to creak, telling him that Billy had left his eaves-dropping for the security of the loft.