“You needn't try to play off Dobell or Mitchell on ME—you hear! Much YOU know of either, don't you? Look at that copy. If Johnny couldn't do better than that, I'd lick him. Of course it's the pen—it ain't your stodgy fingers—oh, no! P'r'aps you'd like to hev a few more boxes o' quills and gold pens and Gillott's best thrown in, for two bits a lesson? I tell you what! I'll throw up the contract in another minit! There goes another quill busted! Look here, what YOU want ain't a pen, but a clothes-pin and a split nail! That'll about jibe with your dilikit gait.”
The master at once stepped to the window and, unobserved, took a quick survey of the interior. Following some ingenious idea of his own regarding fitness, the beautiful Filgee had induced Uncle Ben to seat himself on the floor before one of the smallest desks, presumably his brother's, in an attitude which, while it certainly gave him considerable elbow-room for those contortions common to immature penmanship, offered his youthful instructor a superior eminence, from which he hovered, occasionally swooping down upon his grown-up pupil like a mischievous but graceful jay. But Mr. Ford's most distinct impression was that, far from resenting the derogatory position and the abuse that accompanied it, Uncle Ben not only beamed upon his persecutor with unquenchable good humor, but with undisguised admiration, and showed not the slightest inclination to accept his proposed resignation.
“Go slow, Roop,” he said cheerfully. “You was onct a boy yourself. Nat'rally I kalkilate to stand all the damages. You've got ter waste some powder over a blast like this yer, way down to the bed rock. Next time I'll bring my own pens.”
“Do. Some from the Dobell school you uster go to,” suggested the darkly ironical Rupert. “They was iron-clad injin-rubber, warn't they?”
“Never you mind wot they were,” said Uncle Ben good-humoredly. “Look at that string of 'C's' in that line. There's nothing mean about THEM.”
He put his pen between his teeth, raised himself slowly on his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon his work. Rupert, with his hands in his pockets and his back to the window, cynically assisted at the inspection.
“Wot's that sick worm at the bottom of the page?” he asked.
“Wot might you think it wos?” said Uncle Ben beamingly.
“Looks like one o' them snake roots you dig up with a little mud stuck to it,” returned Rupert critically.
“That's my name.”