Pa hesitated. He was a gentle man.
“Well,” he said, “if you know it, and if you think you’ll remember it, latherin’ wouldn’t teach you nothing. Go in with your ma and get some food, and then wash yourself up and go to bed. Ma’d better give you some of that salve o’ hern for your feet. And Jim—”
“Yes, sir.”
“You watch out jest as hard as you can, and don’t grow up a plumb fool.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jim.
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE IN THE MIST
It has been said that Mr. Carson set an example for the people at Lee which many were tempted to follow. And partly it was the spring calling them; partly it was an itching desire to find the Disbrows. Lee was pretty well disgusted with itself as time went on, for not starting after the absconding undertaker and his family immediately after their disappearance, and they told themselves they certainly would have done it if Mr. Carson hadn’t been so dead set against it. And he was put up to acting the way he did, they knew, by Annie Laurie, who was too soft-hearted altogether.
It was a little surprising, all things considered, that the Reverend Absalom Summers should have been the next after Hi and Jim to yield to the temptation to take to the hills. Resisting temptation, as his little wife pointed out to him, ought to be his specialty. But he contrived to down her argument.
“You don’t seem to understand my noble soul at all, Barbara,” he said. “My real reason for taking to the hills is that I want to visit my two uncles back on Longstreet Mountain.”
“But why should you visit them, Absalom, dear? Do you really care about seeing them? Aren’t they two quarrelsome old men?”