"What cussed nonsense is this?" demanded the man harshly, clashing down his knife and fork and turning frowningly toward his son.
"No, but father, listen to me before you refuse. Mr. Rule says I'm fit to enter college and that I can lead my class too. I've been studying for this three years. I've set my heart upon it," and in his earnestness, tears gathered in his eyes.
"The more fool you, and old Rule is another," was the coarse answer.
The boy's eyes flashed angrily, but the mother here spoke.
"You ought to be proud of your son, John; if you were a true father you would be. If you'd encourage and help him now, he'd make a man that—"
"Shut up! little you know about it. He'd make one of your snivelling white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work. Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old woman, and you, too, my young cock, I've suspicioned that something of this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him by sending him to college. I'll see him hanged first," and the man turned to his breakfast as if he had settled it. But he was startled by his son's exclaiming passionately:
"I will go."
"Look here, what do you mean?" said the father, rising with a black ugly look.
"I mean I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge all my life."
The man's face was livid with anger, and in a low, hissing tone he said: