"And we can wait, I guess," put in Gus.
"Until we can manage in some way to scrape together enough cash to buy books and get apparatus for experiments and go on with our schooling."
"We want more physics and especially electricity," said Gus.
"And other knowledge as well, along with that," Bill amended.
"I reckon you fellers is right," said Mr. Hooper, "but I don't know anything about it. I quit school when I was eleven, but that ain't sayin' I don't miss it. If I had an eddication now, like you lads is goin' to git, er like the Perfesser has, I'd give more'n half what I own. Boys that think they're smart to quit school an' go to work is natchal fools. A feller may git along an' make money, but he'd make a heap more an' be a heap happier, 'long of everything else, if he'd got a schoolin'. An' any boy that's got real sand in his gizzard can buckle down to books an' get a schoolin', even if he don't like it. What I'm a learnin' nowadays makes me know that a feller can make any old study int'restin' if he jes' sets down an' looks at it the right way."
"That's what Gus and I think. There are studies we don't like very much, but we can make ourselves like them for we've got to know a lot about them."
"Grammar, for instance," said Gus.
"Sure. It is tiresome stuff, learning a lot of rules that work only half. But if a fellow is going to be anybody and wants to stand in with people, he's got to know how to talk correctly and write, too." Bill's logic was sound.
"Daddy should have had a drilling in grammar," commented Grace, laughing.
"Oh, you!" blurted Skeets. "Mr. Hooper can talk so that people understand him—and when you do talk," she turned to the old gentleman, "I notice folks are glad to listen, and so is Grace."