“I wish I could vote!” grumbled Newton. “I wish I could! We know a lot more about the school, and Jim Irwin bein’ a good teacher than dad does—and we can’t vote. Why can’t folks vote when they are interested in an election, and know about the issues. It’s tyranny that you and I can’t vote.”
“I reckon,” said Raymond, the conservative, “that the old-time people that fixed it thataway knowed best.”
“Rats!” sneered Newton, the iconoclast. “Why, Calista knows more about the election of school director than dad knows.”
“That don’t seem reasonable,” protested Raymond. “She’s prejudyced, I reckon, in favor of Mr. Jim Irwin.”
“Well, dad’s prejudiced against him,—er, no, he hain’t either. He likes Jim. He’s just prejudiced against giving up his old notions. No, he hain’t neither—I guess he’s only prejudiced against seeming to give up some old notions he seemed to have once! And the kids in school would be prejudiced right, anyhow!”
“Paw says he’ll be on hand prompt,” said Raymond. “But he had to be p’swaded right much. Paw’s proud—and he cain’t read.”
“Sometimes I think the more people read the less sense they’ve got,” said Newton. “I wish I could tie dad up! I wish I could get snakebit, and make him go for the doctor!”
The boys crossed the ridge to the wooded valley in which nestled the Simms cabin. They found Mrs. Simms greatly exercised in her mind because young McGeehee had been found playing with some blue vitriol used by Raymond in his school work on the treatment of seed potatoes for scab.
“His hands was all blue with it,” said she. “Do you reckon, Mr. Newton, that it’ll pizen him?”
“Did he swallow any of it?” asked Newton.