After dinner, made wise by experience, I took them for a long walk up Perilous, to a beautiful, retired glen where they could play, fight (without weapons) and make all the noise they needed to.
On the way back, we met several women and girls on nags, and I was pained to see that my boys did not remove their hats. When I told them they must do so, Philip demanded why.
"To show the respect you feel for women," I replied.
"But I haint got none," he answered candidly; "they never done nothing for me. I'd ruther take off my hat to a cow,—I git something back from her!"
This from the namesake of the Pattern of Chivalry! Philip is very much of a man, and a prodigious worker,—in the shop he does better work than most of the grown-up boys, and is actually permitted to make walnut furniture for the big house—but he certainly lacks minor virtues, such as courtesy and cleanliness.
After supper I happened to ask Killis about his name, and told him I thought he must be named for Achilles, a hero who lived several thousand years ago, and was the greatest fighter of his time. There were unanimous demands to hear all about him, and perforce I started in telling tales of the Trojan War. This time there was no drowsiness, but, as one great combat followed another, intense interest, and howls of remonstrance when I tried to stop.
I have found acceptable literary food for my babes,—but alas, what they want is not milk at all, but blood!
Wednesday Bed-time.
Jason, my "little pet" as the others call him, resents any allusion to the fact that he is small, and burns to play the man. In our garden work, he seizes shovels and mattocks almost as large as himself from the bigger boys, and whacks away joyously with them. To-day while we were making gravel walks, I caught him wheeling Geordie's barrow, while Geordie made feeble passes at the gravel-bank in the creek with Jason's little broken-handled pick. Geordie explained,
"That 'ere little Jason says he's aiming to leave if you give him little-boy jobs,—he wants big ones. I told him he could take my wheel-borrow awhile,—that I were willing to trade jobs with him, to favor him."