FEJEVARY:  It succeeded?

GRANDMOTHER:  So well that those leaves had eyes next day.  But he brought me a fish to trade.  He was a nice boy.

SILAS:  Probably we killed him.

GRANDMOTHER:  I dunno.  Maybe he killed us.  Will Owens’ family was massacred just after this.  Like as not my cookie Indian helped out there.  Something kind of uncertain about the Indians.

SILAS:  I guess they found something kind of uncertain about us.

GRANDMOTHER:  Six o’ one and half a dozen of another.  Usually is.

SILAS:  (to FEJEVARY) I wonder if I’m wrong.  You see, I never went to school—­

GRANDMOTHER:  I don’t know why you say that, Silas.  There was two winters you went to school.

SILAS:  Yes, mother, and I’m glad I did, for I learned to read there, and liked the geography globe.  It made the earth so nice to think about.  And one day the teacher told us all about the stars, and I had that to think of when I was driving at night.  The other boys didn’t believe it was so.  But I knew it was so!  But I mean school—­the way Mr Fejevary went to school.  He went to universities.  In his own countries—­in other countries.  All the things men have found out, the wisest and finest things men have thought since first they began to think—­all that was put before them.

FEJEVARY:  (with a gentle smile) I fear I left a good deal of it untouched.

SILAS:  You took a plenty.  Tell in your eyes you’ve thought lots about what’s been thought.  And that’s what I was setting out to say.  It makes something of men—­learning.  A house that’s full of books makes a different kind of people.  Oh, of course, if the books aren’t there just to show off.

GRANDMOTHER:  Like in Mary Baldwin’s new house.

SILAS:  (trying hard to see it) It’s not the learning itself—­it’s the life that grows up from learning.  Learning’s like soil.  Like—­like fertilizer.  Get richer.  See more.  Feel more.  You believe that?

FEJEVARY:  Culture should do it.

SILAS:  Does in your house.  You somehow know how it is for the other fellow more’n we do.

GRANDMOTHER:  Well, Silas Morton, when you’ve your wood to chop an’ your water to carry, when you kill your own cattle and hogs, tend your own horses and hens, make your butter, soap, and cook for whoever the Lord sends—­there’s none too many hours of the day left to be polite in.

SILAS:  You’re right, mother.  It had to be that way.  But now that we buy our soap—­we don’t want to say what soap-making made us.

GRANDMOTHER:  We’re honest.

SILAS:  Yes.  In a way.  But there’s another kind o’ honesty, seems to me, goes with that more seein’ kind of kindness.  Our honesty with the Indians was little to brag on.

GRANDMOTHER:  You fret more about the Indians than anybody else does.

SILAS:  To look out at that hill sometimes makes me ashamed.