"Nice children," he at length remarked, speaking for the first time
since his arrival.

"So ye think they're nice, do ye?" Jim queried, leaning over and
looking the old man in the eyes.

"Why, yes," David replied, shrinking back somewhat from the coarse
face. "All children are nice to me, but yours are especially fine
ones. What nice hair they have, and such beautiful eyes. I suppose
the oldest go to school."

"Naw. They never saw the inside of a school house."

"You don't say so!" and David looked his astonishment. "Surely there
must be a school near here."

"Oh, yes, there's a school all right, but they've never gone. I don't
set any store by eddication. What good is it to any one, I'd like to
know? Will it help a man to hoe a row of pertaters, or a woman to bake
bread? Now, look at me. I've no eddication, an' yit I've got a good
place here, an' a bank account. You've got eddication, so I
understand, an' what good is it to you? I'm one of the biggest
tax-payers in the parish, an' you, why yer nothing but a pauper, the
Devil's Poor."

At this cruel reminder David shrank back as from a blow, and never
uttered another word during the rest of the meal. The iron was
entering into his soul, and he was beginning to understand something of
the ignominy he was to endure at this house.