"Oh, you greenhorns," laughed the boy. "You do not know that 'slide' means a holiday."
"We have been on our holiday, and are on our way home to go to school."
"School! I should run away from that instead of running to it," remarked the blacksmith, "no one there learns how to use the hammer and anvil to make a horse-shoe."
"But he learns other useful things," said Paul.
"What are you going to be when you grow up?"
"A teacher, like my father."
"Bah, a teacher! I suppose it is a great pleasure to cudgel some boy every day. Oh, what I have endured from teachers is more than I can tell."
"A good teacher knows how to manage a bad boy without using the cudgel.
It is a weak teacher who knows no other way."
"Oh, just hear our wise one! Let me tell you that your father, great as you appear to think him, could not manage me."
"No, not now, but if you were a boy under his care you would see that he would manage you."