“I got good news,” said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance.
“Good news?”
“Yass.—I goin’ make Claude come home.”
Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked away and continued:
“’S no use. Can’t stand it no longer.” He turned suddenly upon the schoolmaster. “Why you di’n’ tell me ed’cation goin’ teck my boy ’way from me?” In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.
“Wait!” he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre in the open door, and said:
“Dear chil’run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete.”
The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the schoolmaster’s hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the educator to Grande Pointe.
“Dear friend,” said the schoolmaster, “shall education be to blame for this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for Claude’s staying?”
“You stay!”