“I’ll not ask you why you’re going outside,” said she, after a moment.
“Jest because ye don’t ax me, I’ll tell ye,” said Joslin suddenly. “I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education.”
“An education? There aren’t many schools back in there?”
“Thar hain’t no schools at all, Ma’am. My daddy war a preacher afore he died. I kain’t read in no book to amount to nothin’. I kain’t hardly write my own name. I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education, because I’m a-goin’ to build a college, Ma’am.”
“A college!”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ve got to do it. My people have been a-killin’ each other in thar fer a hundred years. They kain’t read, they kain’t write, they kain’t think. They hain’t amountin’ to nothin’ whatever in the world. They’re a great people, Ma’am. They’re worth savin’. Well, it kind of come to me, in a sort of callin’, that I’d orter save them. So, like I said, I’m a-goin’ Outside to git me a education, soon as I kin.”
The situation had suddenly become extraordinary. They waited for the mountaineer to go on, as presently he did.
“I’ve nuvver been further down the river than a couple of locks below. I’ve rafted here sence I was fourteen year old, but beyant the aidge of the hills I don’t know nothin’ of the world. Kin ye tell me whar I kin git my education? I don’t reckon it’ll take long—us mounting people larn right fast, Ma’am, when we git a chancet.”
Then, after a pause, he went on, anxiously: “I’d do arything in the world to obleege ye, Ma’am—I’d go back in thar right now with ye if I had time. But ye see, I’m twenty-eight year old, an’ I hain’t got no time to lose.”