"Why, yes, I thought you knew that. Of Harvard."
"Och, that!" contemptuously; "I mean you ain't a gradyate of Millersville Normal?"
"No," humbly acknowledged Fairchilds.
"When I was young," Mr. Getz irrelevantly remarked, "we didn't have no gradyate teachers like what they have now, still. But we anyhow learnt more ACCORDING."
"How long does it take you to get 'em from a, b, c's to the Testament?" inquired the patriarchal Dunkard.
"That depends upon the capacity of the pupil," was Mr. Fairchilds's profound reply.
"Can you learn 'em 'rithmetic good?" asked Nathaniel Puntz. "I got a son his last teacher couldn't learn 'rithmetic to. He's wonderful dumm in 'rithmetic, that there boy is. Absalom by name. After the grandfather. His teacher tried every way to learn him to count and figger good. He even took and spread toothpicks out yet—but that didn't learn him neither. I just says, he ain't appointed to learn 'rithmetic. Then the teacher he tried him with such a Algebry. But Absalom he'd get so mixed up!—he couldn't keep them x's spotted."
"I have a method," Mr. Fairchilds began, "which I trust—"
To Tillie's distress, her aunt's voice, at this instant calling her to "come stir the sots [yeast] in," summoned her to the kitchen.
It was very hard to have to obey. She longed so to stay till Fairchilds should come safely through his fiery ordeal. For a moment she was tempted to ignore the summons, but her conscience, no less than her grateful affection for her aunt, made such behavior impossible. Softly she stole out of the room and noiselessly closed the door behind her.