"The fact is," said Ford, the first chance he had to speak to Dab, "I've been studying that man. He's taught school before."
"Guess he knows how, too. And I ain't afraid about Dick Lee, now I've seen the rest. He can go right ahead of some of them."
"They'll bounce him if he does. Tell you what, Dab, if you and I want to be popular here, we'd better wear our old clothes every day but Sunday."
"And miss about half the questions that come to us. Dick won't be sharp enough for that."
"He says he's going to write a letter home tonight. Made him turn pale too."
Those first letters home!
Ford's was a matter of course, and Frank Harley had had some practice already; but Dab Kinzer had never tried such a thing before, and Dick Lee would not come to anybody else for instructions. Neither would he permit anybody, not even "Captain Dab," to see his letter after it was written.
"I's been mighty partikler 'bout de pronounciation," he said to himself, "specially in wot I wrote to Mr. Morris, but I'd like to see dem all read dem letters. Guess dar'll be a high time at our house."
It would be a long while before Frank Harley's epistle would reach the eyes that were anxiously waiting for it, but there were indeed "high times" in those three houses on the Long-Island shore.
Old Bill Lee was obliged to trust largely to the greater learning of his wife, but he chuckled over every word he managed to pick out, as if he had pulled in a twenty-pound bluefish; and the signature at the bottom affected him somewhat as if he had captured a small whale.