"Whoop-ee!" he gave a sudden yell, at the same time springing into the air and striking his heels twice together in a wild dance of joy. "Whoop-ee!" he yelled again. "Git hit, 'n' let's begin! Git hit, I say!"
"Dale!" she cried in consternation, drawing back from him. "Are you mad?"
"Bob said ye couldn't teach 'counten yo' haid," he breathlessly continued, his face glowing with excited pleasure. "But now ye kin! Now ye kin git the book 'n' give me my larnin', can't ye?"
He was looking down at her with an expression she had never beheld in anyone's face—enthusiasm, wildness, even madness; but his eyes were not seeing her. They missed the parted, startled lips, the heightened color of her oval cheeks, the pulsing throat, and the frightened breathing. They watched only for her to produce the key to his religion—a book.
And she read this in his burning eyes as though it were written there in cold, black, selfish letters. A deep smouldering and immoderate anger seized her. That this man who had seemed such a power of softness should so show himself to be a thing of self-centered flint, wounded her; and Jane rebelled at wounds. For the moment they stared, seemingly hypnotized; until at last her voice came as low and expressionless as his had been full of fire.
"Sit down. I'll get a book, but before you look into it you shall learn a lesson that will be more useful."
He obediently dropped into his chair, but she remained standing and, in the same monotone, said:
"You've told me about your Sunlight Patch, and of a blind sister who reads all day and into the nights to throngs of ignorant people for their improvement; who gave the only horse and the last nine dollars on the place, and left herself nearer helpless than she already was, in order that you might start out to be a great man—a man like Lincoln, or like Clay." He missed a touch of fine sarcasm here. "Now let us see what you have done, and how far you have emulated the great hearts of those noble patterns you've set out to follow: Yesterday you arrived, and," here her cheeks turned a deeper pink, "defended a school teacher against insult. Understand, you did not champion a defenseless girl; it was the school teacher, whom you considered as a necessity to your future. This morning you went out before daylight—I've heard about it—to punish, not an offender against society, but a probable menace to your ambition. You are sorry if the school teacher has a headache, not because a human being is suffering, but because your own desire is thwarted. You have no more charity in your soul than a stone!"
He was silent, contrite and humble, but she had not finished with him yet. While the instinct of the teacher had been stirred, more thoroughly had been aroused a girl's offended pride. So in the same voice she went relentlessly on:
"First learn that your mountain is not the only place which holds a Sunlight Patch! There is one everywhere," her hand, unconsciously placed against her breast, now pressed as she spoke. "In everyone there must be that same selfless desire to give the last horse and the last nine dollars to whomsoever it may carry to a higher goal, or mankind is a failure. Learn this now. Do not think because you were born in Sunlight Patch that any of its virtues are clinging to you. We carry no virtues but our own—remember that! Don't forget that other people depend on you just as much as you depend upon them, and that life is a big game of give and take—the giver usually winding up with the largest share of happiness. Now go to the house. Bob has called you twice!"