Mr. Rowantree had been stroking his long ruddy mustache with his white hand, waiting, it seemed, for developments. But now he came forward, bearing upon his handsome face a look not unlike that he had turned upon Skully a while before.
“Mrs. McIntosh is your wife, I suppose,” he said in his easy, pleasant way.
“You jest bet she is,” said the man defiantly, “and I want her to home. She’s making me the laughing stock of the hull place.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Rowantree, quite politely. “What are they laughing at? Excuse me if I don’t quite understand.”
“They’re laughing because a married woman leaves her home and sets in school with childer, l’arning like she was five years old.”
“They probably are not aware that men and women of the most learned sort go to universities until they are much older than Mrs. McIntosh. Naturally, they wouldn’t know that, would they? It’s not the kind of thing that folk here on the mountain would be liable to hear about.”
“We know ’nough,” said the man sullenly. “We ken git along without nobody’s help.”
“Now, really,” said Mr. Rowantree in a pleasant tone, “you don’t get on very well, you know. You couldn’t get on with men beyond the mountains—wouldn’t measure up with them in any way, except perhaps, in the use of a gun. And that’s because you don’t know the things your excellent wife is trying to learn. She already knows her letters, writes her name, and is beginning to read books. Of course that puts her quite a way ahead of you, Mr. McIntosh.”
Mr. Rowantree still stroked his mustache with a white hand and smiled.
“I don’t allow no woman belonging to me to know more than I know,” said Mr. McIntosh in what was meant to be a very manly manner. “What knowing thar is around our house is for me.”