He found supper on the table, the savoury bacon and hoe-cake greeting him from the door. The head of the family, lean, lank and brown, was already transporting huge mouthfuls from the tin platter to his mouth; the fat, slovenly daughter sat for a moment to rest and cool her face before beginning to eat, while the mother still occupied a chimney corner, pipe in mouth, for she “hadn’t wanted nothin’ to eat lately, her stomick seemed off the hooks somehow.” These, with the boy, composed the family, a row of graves out under the trees at the back of the hut 19 filling the long gap between Mirandy, a young woman of twenty-one, and Steve. The boy sat down, but before he ate that remarkable tale of his morning experience had to be told. When he was done the father said:
“Huh, better let city folks alone; don’t have nothin’ to do with none of ’em.”
The boy, feeling the rebuke, then turned to his supper, but when his father had gone out to smoke, and Mirandy was in the lane looking for her sweetheart, Steve stole up to his mother’s side and stood digging his toe in the sand hearth.
“Mammy,” he said at last, “what makes that man diffrunt from we uns?”
The old woman smoked a moment in silence and then said:
“Wal, there’s a heap over the mountains what makes him diffrunt,––things we ain’ never seen ner heern tell on.” She smoked again a puff or two, then added, “I recken schoolin’s the most.”
“What’s schoolin’?” said the boy.
“Larnin’ things,” she replied.
The subject of schools had never been discussed in the boy’s hearing. His father didn’t believe in them, there wasn’t a book, not even a Bible, in all the scattered little remote mountain community, and if the boy had ever heard either books or schools mentioned 20 before the words had made no impression on him.
“Do they larn to make watch things thar?” he asked.