“That's what I said. You ought to mix with the best folks and get a fine education and meet somebody besides drummers and—and Sol Higgins's son. Selling coffins may be a good job, I don't say 'tain't; somebody's got to do it and we'll all have to invest in that kind of—er—furniture sometime or 'nother. And Dan Higgins is a good enough boy, too. But he ain't your kind.”
“My kind! Uncle Shad, what in the world have I got to do with Dan Higgins and coffins—and all the rest of it?”
“Nothin', nothin' at all. That's what I'm tryin' to tell you if you'll give me a chance. Mary-'Gusta, your Uncle Zoeth and I have decided that you must go to school up to Boston, at the Misses Cabot's school there. You'll board along with that Mrs. Wyeth, the one we met today. She's a good woman, I cal'late, though she is so everlastin' straight up and down. You'll board there and you'll go to school to those Cabot women. And—”
But Mary-'Gusta interrupted. The hen was off the nest now, there was no doubt of that, and of all unexpected and impossible hatchings hers was the most complete. The absurdity of the idea, to the girl's mind, overshadowed even the surprise of it.
“What?” she said. “Uncle Shad, what—? Do you mean that you and Uncle Zoeth have been in conspiracy to send me away to school? To send me away to Boston?”
Shadrach nodded.
“No conspiracy about it,” he declared. “Me and Zoeth and Mr. Keith, we—”
“Mr. Keith? Yes, yes, I see. It was Mr. Keith who put the idea in your head. How perfectly silly!”
“Silly? Why is it silly?”
“Because it is. It's ridiculous.”