The tanner sighed and arose. He walked to the window looking down on the cluttered yard. There he stuck his big hands in his stomach pockets and “rolled his chew.”
With the tactlessness of boyhood, Nathan announced, “The meter’s off and besides—it doesn’t really say anything—that is, in a nice smooth way.”
If he had struck old Caleb with a rock he could not have surprised the tanner more dynamically.
“Don’t say anything! Smooth way! Meter? What’s meter?”
“In poetry it’s the character of a stanza. It’s made up of any given number of lines, divided into measures equal in time—and length of syllables—and rhythmic construction.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” cried Caleb. “Where did you learn that—them big words and all?”
“Miss Hastings showed me. The rest sort of always came easy to me.”
“Then what the hell are you doin’ workin’ here in my place, when you got book-learnin’ like that?”
“My father makes me.”
“He must be a dog-gone bigger fool than I allus took him for. Say that book-learnin’ over!”