Bob looked up at Jock and winked slowly. “Do you remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes said about every little place he went to thinking it was the central spot of all the world, and that the axis of the earth came straight up through it? He went down to a little place named Hull, once, and when he came away he said the people there were all quoting Pope, though they didn’t know it, and saying, ‘all are but parts of one stupendous Hull’! Remember that, Jock?”
“Ye needn’t be makin’ fun o’ me,” said Ethan, sharply. “I guess folks round here is as smart as they be anywhere. You city people talk about how green country folks are when they come to teown, but I don’t believe they’re any greener than city folks be when they go into the country.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Bob, quickly. “I was only wondering a little why it was that you thought everybody ought to know about Goose Bay, and the time the British and our men had here in the War of 1812.”
“Why shouldn’t they know about it, I’d like to know?” replied Ethan, somewhat mollified. “It’s hist’ry; an’ ye study hist’ry, don’t ye?”
“We pretend to; but Jock here doesn’t know much about it, you see,” said Bob.
“He’ll larn. But I was speakin’ about the greenness o’ city folks in the country. Well, they be green. My wife had a time of it with the fresh airers only last summer.”
“The ‘fresh airers’? What are they?”
“Don’t ye know what they be? Well, I swan, ye’re greener ’n I thought. They’re the boys an’ girls the folks pick up off the streets in the city and send up into the country every summer. We had some last year.”
“Oh, yes, I know. You mean the children sent out by the fresh-air fund.”