"And who'd take a little boy like me? Folks laugh at little boys—think they don't know a thing. And folks always ask so many questions. They want to know where you come from, and who your father is, and if he's got any cows. And I won't lie. And next thing they'd be sending me home. They'd say home was the best place for little boys. H'm! So it is, if you don't have to get whipped!
"O, my! Didn't I have to take it that last time? Father never hurt so before. Made all the bad come up in my throat, and I can't swallow it down yet. It would be good enough for him if I was dead; for then every time he went out to the barn there'd be that horsewhip hanging up on the nail; and he'd think to himself—'Where's that little boy I used to whip?' And then the tears will come into his eyes, I pretty much know they will. I saw the tears in his eyes once when I was sick. He felt real bad; but when I got well, first thing he did was to whip me again. Whippings don't do any good. All that does any good is when mother talks to me; and that don't do any good, either. She made me learn this verse:—
"'And thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy fathers, and serve him with a perfect heart and a willing mind. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee, but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever.'
"There, I know that straight as a book. She prays to God to make me better, but He doesn't do it yet, and I should think she'd get discouraged. 'Heart like a stone,' she said. That made me want to laugh, for I could feel it beating all the time she spoke, and it couldn't if it was a stone! Bad heart, though, or I wouldn't be so bad myself.
"Well, it's no use to think about badness or goodness now," said Willy, flinging another handful of grass into the road. "What'll I do? That's the question.
"You see, now, folks have such a poor opinion of boys," added he, his thoughts spinning round the same circle again. "Most wish I was a girl. O, my stars, what an idea!"
And completely disgusted with himself, he jumped up and turned a somerset.
"Better be whipped three times a day than be a girl!
"But father felt real bad that time I was sick, for I saw him. Not so bad as mother, though. Poor mother! I no business to gone off and left her. What you s'pose she thought last night, when I didn't come back from the post office?"
This question had tried to rise before, but had always been forced back.