“Too late, too late,” cried Mr. Rowantree, waving his hand magnificently in the air. “You see, she knows more than you this very minute. She’s got the key to the puzzle. You can’t stop her now. She’s got something you haven’t—something that puts her in line with the world beyond these mountains—something that will comfort and amuse her as long as she lives. That’s the wonder about learning; once you get it in your head, nobody can take it away from you.”
Mr. Rowantree regarded the mountaineer with an unflinching eye.
“I reckon I ken take it out o’ her,” said the man, his eyes flashing.
“No, you can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree. “You may think you can, but you can’t. She’s got hold of a secret that makes her more powerful than you, though of course your muscles are much stronger than hers. Mark this, Mr. McIntosh: No matter how things go with her, she’ll always have a kind of happiness that no one can take away.”
There was a little pause and then Mr. Rowantree went on.
“What’s more, she’s getting something that she’ll not want to keep to herself. That’s the way with folk who learn. They want to pass their knowledge on. She’ll be passing it to her children and they’ll come up in the world. You can’t tell anything about how far they’ll come up. They may get to be the best known and most useful men and women in the state. They say children take from their mother, and your children have a good mother, Mr. McIntosh. She’s a woman with a clear, sensible mind, who wants to lift herself up out of poverty and ignorance. That’s the sort of a wife you have, sir, and I congratulate you.”
The preposterously pleasant Mr. Rowantree advanced upon the glowering McIntosh and held out his hand. In bewilderment the mountaineer took it and received a grip that surprised him.
“Aren’t you proud of her?” demanded Mr. Rowantree. “I know what it is to be proud of a wife, sir. I have one that’s much too good for me, and I realize it. Yes, it’s a great thing for a man to have a wife he can be proud of; one that can do something he can’t.”
“I ken do what she’s doing,” said Mr. McIntosh defiantly. “Thar ain’t no reason that I ken see, why I can’t do it as well as her.”
“I doubt it,” said Mr. Rowantree, shaking his head, “you might—but I doubt it, Mr. McIntosh.”