It was some hours later. Billy's aunt had ruthlessly clipped the turkey feathers from his head, taking the hair off in great patches. She had then boiled his scalp, so the little boy thought, in her efforts to remove the mucilage. Now, shorn of his locks and of some of his courage, the child was sitting quietly by her side, listening to a superior moral lecture and indulging in a compulsory heart-to-heart talk with his relative.
“I don't see that it does you any good, William, to put you to bed.”
“I don' see as it do neither,” agreed Billy.
“I can not whip you; I am constitutionally opposed to corporal punishment for children.”
“I's 'posed to it too,” he assented.
“I believe I will hire a servant, so that I may devote my entire time to your training.”
This prospect for the future did not appeal to her nephew. On the contrary it filled him with alarm.
“A husban' 'd be another sight handier,” he declared with energy; “he 'd be a heap mo' 'count to you 'n a cook, Aunt Minerva. There's that Major—”
“You will never make a preacher of yourself, William, unless you improve.”
The child looked up at her in astonishment; this was the first he knew of his being destined for the ministry.