A dozen questions rushed to my tongue, but I held them back, for he was looking me up and down with a wistful tenderness that seemed to prelude further revelation.
'I’m going to tell you the whole story now,' he said with an effort. 'I promised your father I would. He told me to. And I’d better get it over. Mebbe there’s something in it for you—and mebbe not. But here it is.'
II
'I’ve lived right here since I was a little shaver. My father cleared this land on the Ridge, and as I grew up, I helped him. We were a small family for those days. I was the only boy. There was one sister, Sarah, who keeps house for me now—and Cynthy. Cynthy was an orphan my folks took to raise for company to Sarah. My father was her guardeen and she had two thousand dollars, so it wasn’t charity, you understand. She was the prettiest child, an’ the gentlest, I ever see, with her big brown eyes, her curly bronze hair, an’ her friendly little ways. I made it my business to look after Cynthy, the way a bigger boy will, from the time she come to us. Sometimes Sarah, being larger an’ self-willed, would pick on her a little—an’ then I’d put Sarah in her place mighty sudden. P’raps Cynthy was my romance, for she was a little finer stuff than we were. But I wasn’t a sentimental boy. Quite the other way. Mostly I was counted a handful. You ain’t got anybody in your school as hard to handle as I was when I was a cub.
'When I went to school, I went for the fun of it, and to torment the teacher. I hadn’t another thought in my head. If I didn’t get a lickin' once a week, I thought I was neglected. When I was sixteen, I’d been through Dayboll’s Arithmetic, and I could read and spell a little for my own use, but my spelling wasn’t much good to anybody else. That was all I knew and all I wanted to know. You see, the little I learned was all plastered on the outside, so to speak. It hadn’t called to anything inside me then.
'One fall there come a new teacher to our school, a young fellow earnin' money to get through college. He got on the right side of me somehow. I can’t tell how he did it, because I don’t know. But first he set me studying and then he set me thinking. And I began to work at books from the inside. They weren’t tasks any more. He made me feel like I had a mind and could use it, just like I knew I had strong muscles and could use them. Seemed 's if when I once got started, I couldn’t stop. I got up mornings to study. I studied nights an’ I studied Sundays. There couldn’t nothing stop me. I thought I’d found the biggest thing on earth when I found out how to make my mind work! Jerusalem! Those were days! I was happy then! Sometimes I wonder what the Lord’s got saved up for us in the next world as good as that tasted in this.'
He stopped, threw back his head and drew in a long, ecstatic breath, as though he would taste again the sharp, sweet flavor of that draught.
'I studied like that for nigh two years. Then a new idea struck me. It was one spring day. I remember father and I was ploughing for corn. I said, "Father, if I could get a school, I guess I could teach." He hadn’t no more idea I could teach than that I could go to Congress, not a bit; but I finally drilled it into him I was in earnest, and that fall he helped me get a school near home.
'I never did any work as hard as that. It was against me that I was so near home, and everybody knew I’d never studied until just lately. I could tell you stories from now till bedtime about the times I had with the big boys and girls. But I never let go my main idea for a minute—that it wasn’t just so much grammar and 'rithmetic I was tryin' to cram into them, but that I had to show 'em how to sense it all. By and by, one after another found out what I was after. The bright ones took to it like ducks to water. It was just wonderful the work they’d do for me, once they understood.
'A notion took shape in my head. For all I could see, the things to learn were endless. They stretched ahead of me like a sun-path on the water. I thought, "Mebbe I can go on learning all my days. Mebbe I can teach as I learn, so young folks will say of me as I said of my teacher, He showed me how to sense things for myself." That notion seemed wonderful good to me! It grew stronger an’ stronger. It seemed as if I’d fit into such a life the way a key fits in its lock. And I couldn’t see no reason why I shouldn’t put it through.