The Indiscreet Letter | Page 8

Then, turning to the Traveling Salesman, he mused reminiscently:
"Talking's--all--right. But where in creation do you get the time to think?
Got any kids?" he asked abruptly.
"N-o," said the Traveling Salesman. "My wife, I guess, is kid enough
for me."
Around the Young Electrician's eyes the whimsical smile-wrinkles
deepened with amazing vividness. "Huh!" he said. "I've got six."
"Gee!" chuckled the Salesman. "Boys?"
The Young Electrician's eyebrows lifted in astonishment. "Sure they're
boys!" he said. "Why, of course!"
The Traveling Salesman looked out far away through the window and
whistled a long, breathy whistle. "How in the deuce are you ever going
to take care of 'em?" he asked. Then his face sobered suddenly. "There
was only two of us fellows at home--just Daniel and me--and even

so--there weren't ever quite enough of anything to go all the way
round."
For just an instant the Youngish Girl gazed a bit skeptically at the
Traveling Salesman's general rotund air of prosperity.
"You don't look--exactly like a man who's never had enough," she said
smilingly.
"Food?" said the Traveling Salesman. "Oh, shucks! It wasn't food I was
thinking of. It was education. Oh, of course," he added conscientiously,
"of course, when the crops weren't either too heavy or too blooming
light, Pa usually managed some way or other to get Daniel and me to
school. And schooling was just nuts to me, and not a single nut so hard
or so green that I wouldn't have chawed and bitten my way clear into it.
But Daniel--Daniel somehow couldn't seem to see just how to enter a
mushy Bartlett pear without a knife or a fork--in some other person's
fingers. He was all right, you know--but he just couldn't seem to find
his own way alone into anything. So when the time came--" the grin on
the Traveling Salesman's mouth grew just a little bit wry at one
corner--"and so when the time came--it was an awful nice,
sweet-smelling June night, I remember, and I'd come home early--I
walked into the kitchen as nice as pie, where Pa was sitting dozing in
the cat's rocking-chair, in his gray stocking feet, and I threw down
before him my full year's school report. It was pink, I remember, which
was supposed to be the rosy color of success in our school; and I says:
'Pa! There's my report! And Pa,' I says, as bold and stuck-up as a brass
weathercock on a new church, 'Pa! Teacher says that one of your boys
has got to go to college!' And I was grinning all the while, I remember,
worse than any Chessy cat.
"And Pa he took my report in both his horny old hands and he spelt it
all out real careful and slow and respectful, like as though it had been a
lace valentine, and 'Good boy!' he says, and 'Bully boy!' and 'So
Teacher says that one of my boys has got to go to college? One of my
boys? Well, which one? Go fetch me Daniel's report.' So I went and
fetched him Daniel's report. It was gray, I remember--the supposed
color of failure in our school--and I stood with the grin still half frozen

on my face while Pa spelt out the dingy record of poor Daniel's year.
And then, 'Oh, gorry!' says Pa. 'Run away and g'long to bed. I've got to
think. But first,' he says, all suddenly cautious and thrifty, 'how much
does it cost to go to college?' And just about as delicate and casual as a
missionary hinting for a new chapel, I blurted out loud as a bull: 'Well,
if I go up state to our own college, and get a chance to work for part of
my board, it will cost me just $255 a year, or maybe--maybe,' I
stammered, 'maybe, if I'm extra careful, only $245.50, say. For four
years that's only $982,' I finished triumphantly.
"'G-a-w-d!' says Pa. Nothing at all except just, 'G-a-w-d!'
"When I came down to breakfast the next morning, he was still sitting
there in the cat's rocking-chair, with his face as gray as his socks, and
all the rest of him--blue jeans. And my pink school report, I remember,
had slipped down under the stove, and the tortoise-shell cat was lashing
it with her tail; but Daniel's report, gray as his face, was still clutched
up in Pa's horny old hand. For just a second we eyed each other sort of
dumb-like, and then for the first time, I tell you, I seen tears in his eyes.
"'Johnny,' he says, 'it's Daniel that'll have to go to college. Bright men,'
he says, 'don't need no education.'"
Even after thirty years the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly
with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted
carelessness