One of Ours | Page 9

never been sent to school,
and could not read or write. Claude, when he was a little boy, tried to
teach her to read, but what she learned one night she had forgotten by
the next. She could count, and tell the time of day by the clock, and she
was very proud of knowing the alphabet and of being able to spell out
letters on the flour sacks and coffee packages. "That's a big A." she
would murmur, "and that there's a little a."
Mahailey was shrewd in her estimate of people, and Claude thought her
judgment sound in a good many things. He knew she sensed all the
shades of personal feeling, the accords and antipathies in the household,
as keenly as he did, and he would have hated to lose her good opinion.
She consulted him in all her little difficulties. If the leg of the kitchen
table got wobbly, she knew he would put in new screws for her. When
she broke a handle off her rolling pin, he put on another, and he fitted a
haft to her favourite butcher-knife after every one else said it must be
thrown away. These objects, after they had been mended, acquired a
new value in her eyes, and she liked to work with them. When Claude
helped her lift or carry anything, he never avoided touching her, this
she felt deeply. She suspected that Ralph was a little ashamed of her,
and would prefer to have some brisk young thing about the kitchen.
On days like this, when other people were not about, Mahailey liked to
talk to Claude about the things they did together when he was little; the
Sundays when they used to wander along the creek, hunting for wild
grapes and watching the red squirrels; or trailed across the high
pastures to a wild-plum thicket at the north end of the Wheeler farm.
Claude could remember warm spring days when the plum bushes were
all in blossom and Mahailey used to lie down under them and sing to
herself, as if the honey-heavy sweetness made her drowsy; songs
without words, for the most part, though he recalled one mountain
dirge which said over and over, "And they laid Jesse James in his
grave."

IV
The time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling
denominational college on the outskirts of the state capital, where he
had already spent two dreary and unprofitable winters.
"Mother," he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak to
her alone, "I wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to the
State University."
She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.
"But why, Claude?"
"Well, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the Temple
aren't much good. Most of them are just preachers who couldn't make a
living at preaching."
The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into his
mother's face. "Son, don't say such things. I can't believe but teachers
are more interested in their students when they are concerned for their
spiritual development, as well as the mental. Brother Weldon said
many of the professors at the State University are not Christian men;
they even boast of it, in some cases."
"Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate they
know their subjects. These little pin-headed preachers like Weldon do a
lot of harm, running about the country talking. He's sent around to pull
in students for his own school. If he didn't get them he'd lose his job. I
wish he'd never got me. Most of the fellows who flunk out at the State
come to us, just as he did."
"But how can there be any serious study where they give so much time
to athletics and frivolity? They pay their football coach a larger salary
than their President. And those fraternity houses are places where boys
learn all sorts of evil. I've heard that dreadful things go on in them
sometimes. Besides, it would take more money, and you couldn't live
as cheaply as you do at the Chapins'."

Claude made no reply. He stood before her frowning and pulling at a
calloused spot on the inside of his palm. Mrs. Wheeler looked at him
wistfully. "I'm sure you must be able to study better in a quiet, serious
atmosphere," she said.
He sighed and turned away. If his mother had been the least bit
unctuous, like Brother Weldon, he could have told her many
enlightening facts. But she was so trusting and childlike, so faithful by
nature and so ignorant of life as he knew it, that it was hopeless to
argue with her. He could shock her and make her fear the world