The Indiscreet Letter | Page 8

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 to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter.
"I'd had pains before in my stomach," he acknowledged good-naturedly, "but that morning with Pa was the first time in my life that I ever had any pain in my plans!--So we mortgaged the house and the cow-barn and the maple-sugar trees," he continued, more and more cheerfully, "and Daniel finished his schooling--in the Lord's own time--and went to college."
With another sudden, loud guffaw of mirth all the color came