This was defiance and opposition in earnest, but the boy could not see that it produced any effect on the quiet-eyed young man who sat before him.
“When you understand it better, Dick,” said Merry, “you will be quite willing to do as father desired.”
“I won’t! I know what you want. You want to take me away where there are big towns and lots of people and every boy has to go to school. I don’t want to go to school. I can learn all I want to know without going to school.”
“You think you can, but you would be sure to find out your mistake when you grew up and became a man. Next to health, education is the most valuable possession in the world.”
“Next to health! Why, Old Joe says white folks in the big towns make their boys and girls go to school till they get weak and sickly and lose their health. He says the white boys in towns study till their chests are flat, and they cough, and their eyes are weak, and they have to wear glasses, and they have no muscles, and they never become real men at all. I’ll never do that! I can read and write and figure. That is enough education of that kind. Now Old Joe is teaching me all he knows, and he knows more than any white man who ever lived.”
“I see Old Joe has given you some false ideas, Dick,” said Frank quietly, as he stood up. “Take a look at me. I was brought up in the white man’s school. Am I flat-chested? Have I a cough? Are my eyes weak?”
The boy regarded Frank searchingly and silently for some moments, and then into his dark eyes came a look of lofty scorn, as he said:
“You’re a tenderfoot!”
Frank laughed outright.
“Is that why you have taken such an aversion to me?” he exclaimed.