“Education,” said Bud, who had a marvellous memory, and was now, you will notice, Ailie Dyce, sitting on a high chair, with the maid on a stool before her—“education is not what a lot of sillies think it is; it isn't knowing everything. Lots try for it that way, and if they don't die young, just when they're going to win the bursary, they grow up horrid bores that nobody asks to picnics. You can't know everything, not if you sit up cramming till the cows come home; and if you want to see a brainy person jump, ask him how his mother raised her dough. Miss Katherine MacNeill, never—never—NEVER be ashamed of not knowing a thing, but always be ashamed of not wanting to know. That's Part One. Don't you think you should have an exercise-book, child, and take it down?”
“Toots! what's my head for?” said the servant.
“Uncle Dan says education is knowing what you don't know, and knowing where to find it out without the other people knowing; but he says in most places you can get the name of having it fine and good by talking loud and pushing all your goods in front of you in a big enough barrow. And Auntie Bell—she says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and the rest of it is what she skipped at Barbara Mushet's Seminary. But I tell you, child (said the echo of Ailie Dyce), that education's just another name for love.”
“My stars! I never knew that before,” cried the servant. “I'm awful glad about Charles!”
“It isn't that kind of love,” Bud hurriedly explained, “though it's good enough, for that's too easy. You're only on the trail for education when you love things so you've simply got to learn as much as is good for your health about them. Everything's sweet—oh, so sweet!—all the different countries, and the different people, when you understand, and the woods, and the things in them, and all the animals—'cepting maybe pud-docks, though it's likely God made them, too, when He was kind of careless—and the stars, and the things men did, and women—'specially those that's dead, poor dears!—and all the books, 'cepting the stupid ones Aunt Ailie simply can't stand, though she never lets on to the ladies who like that kind.”
“My Lord! must you love them all?” asked the maid, astonished.
“Yes, you must, my Lord,” said Bud. “You'll never know the least thing well in this world unless you love it. It's sometimes mighty hard, I allow. I hated the multiplication table, but now I love it—at least, I kind of love it up to seven times nine, and then it's almost horrid, but not so horrid as it was before I knew that I would never have got to this place from Chicago unless a lot of men had learned the table up as far as twelve times twelve.”
“I'm not particular about the multiplication table,” said the maid, “but I want to be truly refined, the same as you said in yon letter to Charles. I know he'll be expecting it.”
“H-m-m-m-m!” said Bud, thoughtfully, “I s'pose I'll have to ask Auntie Ailie about that, for I declare to goodness I don't know where you get it, for it's not in any of the books I've seen. She says it's the One Thing in a lady, and it grows inside you some way, like—like—like your lungs, I guess. It's no use trying to stick it on outside with lessons on the piano or the mandoline, and parlor talk about poetry, and speaking mim as if you had a clothes-pin in your mouth, and couldn't say the least wee thing funny without it was a bit you'd see in Life and Work. Refinement, some folk think, is not laughing right out.”
“My stars!” said Kate.