Amos Burr looked at him helplessly. "Wall, I never!" he exclaimed.

"Did you ever hear the likes?" said his wife.

"I can go, pa, can't I?" asked Nicholas.

"He can go, pa, can't he?" repeated Sarah Jane, looking up with her
mouth wide open and full of corn bread.

Burr shook his head and looked at his wife.

"I don't see as I can get any help," he said. "You're as good as a hand,
and I can't spare you." Then he concluded with a touch of irritation, "I
don't see as you want any more schoolin'. You can read and write now a
heap better'n I can."

Nicholas choked over his bread and his lips trembled.

"I--I don't want to be like you, pa!" he cried breathlessly, and the
unshed tears stung his eyelids. "I want to be different!"

Burr looked up stolidly. "I don't see as you want any more schoolin',"
he repeated stubbornly, but his wife came sharply to the boy's
assistance.

"I wish you'd stop pesterin' the child, Amos," she said, inspired less
by the softness of amiability than by the genius of opposition. "I don't
see how you can be everlastingly doin' it--my dead sister's child, too."