"Course I wouldn't do it," sez I. "He may have been in the right as far as I know, an' anyway, she gave him the worst of it."
"I don't want her to give 'em the worst of it. I want her to act like a gal child. Ridin' her pony into the schoolroom an' ropin' the master ain't no way for a gal child to act. What I want is for the teachers to play fair. It ain't reasonable to suppose 'at these mountains was ever under water."
"You stood for it when the astronomer said so," sez I; "an' the
Bible sez so, an'—"
"Well, that's all right when it comes to grown-ups; but the' ain't no use makin' a child say somethin' it don't nowise believe. The truth is more important than a lot of water 'at dried up millions of years ago—if it ever was here."
"Well, the truth is a heap o' bother to Barbie's teachers at the best," sez I. "Look at her spellin'—she comes upon a cross-bred word in a book an' the teacher sez it's pronounced one way, an' you another, an' me another, until she thinks we're all liars; and she knows it the next day when she comes across another word spelled almost alike an' pronounced just the opposite. How you goin' to teach a child to spell an' be honest both?"
"It's a damned outrage!" sez Jabez, his eyes flashin'. "Take 'thought' an' through,' an' 'though'—why, it's enough to ruin the morals of the best child the' is. Hang it, I—"
"Well, you had your own way about it," sez I. "You've had three different teachers here this term."
"Who built the school?" sez Jabez. "Didn't I build it with my own money, just so I'd have it handy, an' didn't I offer to pay the teacher if they'd put it right here at the ranch?"
"You ain't got money enough to bring the world here to her feet, Jabez," sez I, "an' it wouldn't be the best thing for her if you could."
Well, I sat there the whole blessed night, cheerin' him up. Every time he'd get to thinkin' about his arm or his leg, I'd say somethin' to rile him an' take his mind off his afflictions, an' along about dawn he fell asleep. Spider Kelley had found the doctor almost in our neighborhood, an' he arrived with him by ten in the mornin'. He paid me a high compliment on the leg, an' after he'd rounded up a few splinters it wasn't no trouble at all to set it; but Jabez was in for a good long spell of it, an' the Spring round-up in sight. You might think that this would rile him up too; but he took it like a hero, an' I kept him in touch with everything.