“If he’s got it in him to be a success it’ll come out anyhow, school or no school. If he hasn’t, schoolin’ ‘ll be wasted. But it isn’t wholly that. I need his money. I don’t make no bones about saying so. I’m a poor man, ma’am. It’s about time the boy commenced paying me back for some of the trouble and expense he’s been since he was born.”
“Why should he? He didn’t ask to be born!”
Johnathan dodged that. “I had to work at his age and pay back my father.”
“And hasn’t the memory of that injustice softened you toward you own son?”
“Injustice? What injustice? I always had to work. I never even had as much schoolin’ as Nat has already. And look at me!”
“Yes, look at you!—A bigoted, psalm-singing, heart-hardened, petulant-mouthed, intolerable old hypocrite! There!”
“What? What’s that you say?”
“You heard me! You’re all of that and more. And the whole town knows it. You’ve got a boy as rare and fine and promising as you’re common and coarse and vulgar. And you’re deliberately wrecking his life by taking him away from his studies, setting him at work in a horrid smelly tannery for a few easy dollars. Somebody ought to have the law on you!”
“And you’re nothing but a fussy, homely, trouble-messin’ old maid. You better go find a man and have a few young ones of your own before you come ’round tellin’ other people how to raise theirs. If this is all you come to see me about, I guess you can hoof it!”
“Don’t you know your boy is capable of writing poetry!” demanded the now hysterical teacher.