"Can your father—I mean Tom Hewlet?"
"Well, he sort of pokes along at it, but it ain't just what you'd call readin'. Sometimes, when he's right drunk, he gets a piece of old newspaper an' moves his mouth around. Oh, he did the funniest thing once!" she clapped her hands and bent over merrily. "He was workin' himself up into an awful spree, but misplaced his demijohn an' had us lookin' everywhere for it. I'd hid it, but never let on! He groaned around a lot, an' I think sort of suspected me; but after 'while settled down with the Bible. It was upside down, so that's how I don't think he can read!"
"Then what?"
"Just guess!" Nancy went into more convulsions of laughter. "He began, talkin' right loud an' rockin' his chair right fast: 'An' Solomen, the wise man, says to his Democrats that if a step-darter treats her Pappy mean, an' hides things, she'll go down—down—down—down—' an' all this time, Miss Jane, his voice was gettin' lower an' lower till, when it couldn't go no lower, he gurgled: 'ter hell!' Then he'd wait awhile, lookin' sort of sneakin' at me, turn some pages an' do it all over again—only each time he'd begin in a higher pitch so's he could get moh 'downs' in it, an' make it sound scarier. When I wouldn't pay any attention, he threw the Bible at me an' stomped out!"
"Is he back yet?" Jane seemed to lose some of her gaiety when asking this.
"No'm; an' I hope he won't never come back!"
"Have you any idea where he is?"
"Only he said he an' Tusk Potter were goin' in the mountains after ginseng. They go most every yeah. You can't guess the peace there's been at home this last month, Miss Jane!"
"I think I can," she murmured. "Nancy, suppose you were to work hard on those sums, and be more careful in the way you speak, and the school should grow enough for you to be my assistant, and Mr. McElroy should run his railroad through your house—where would Tom Hewlet and his wife go? Would they stay around here?"
"What a bully fairy-tale," the girl delightedly clasped one of Jane's hands. "No'm, I reckon he'd go out to Missouri an' live with his brother. He's always wantin' to. Why, Miss Jane? Is there any chance of all that?"