Of co’se Sonny he’s got his faults, which anybody ‘ll tell you; but th’ ain’t a dumb brute on the farm but’ll foller him around—­an’ the nigger Dicey, why, she thinks they never was such another boy born into the world—­that is, not no human child.

An’ wife an’ me—­

But of co’se he’s ours.

I don’t doubt thet he ain’t constructed thess exac’ly ez the school-teachers would have him, ef they had their way.  Sometimes I have thought I’d like his disposition eased up a little, myself, when he taken a stand ag’in my jedgment or wife’s.

Takin’ ’em all round, though, the teachers has been mighty patient with him.

At one school the teacher did take him out behind the school-house one day to whup him; an’ although teacher is a big strong man, Sonny’s mighty wiry an’ quick, an’ some way he slipped his holt, an’ fo’ teacher could ketch him ag’in he had clumb up the lightnin’-rod on to the roof thess like a cat.  An’ teacher he felt purty shore of him then, ’cause he ’lowed they wasn’t no other way to git down (which they wasn’t, the school bein’ a steep-sided buildin’), an’ he ’d wait for him.

So teacher he set down close-t to the lightnin’-rod to wait.  He wouldn’t go back in school without him, cause he didn’t want the child’en to know he’d got away.  So down he set; but he hadn’t no mo’ ’n took his seat sca’cely when he heerd the child’en in school roa’in’ out loud, laughin’ fit to kill theirselves.

He lowed at first thet like ez not the monitor was cuttin’ up some sort o’ didoes, the way monitors does gen’ally, so he waited a-while; but it kep’ a-gittin’ worse, so d’rectly he got up, an’ he went in to see what the excitement was about; an’lo and beholt!  Sonny had slipped down the open chimbly right in amongst ’em—­come out a-grinnin’, with his face all sooted over, an’, says he, “Say, fellers,” says he, “I run up the lightnin’-rod, an’ he’s a-waitin’ for me to come down.”  An’ with that he went an’ gethered up his books, deliberate, an’fetched his hat, an’ picked up a nest o’ little chimbly-swallows he had dislodged in comin’ down (all this here it happened thess las’ June), an’ he went out an’ harnessed up his goat-wagon, an’ got in.  An’ thess ez he driv’ out the school-yard into the road the teacher come in, an’ he see how things was.

Of co’se sech conduct ez that is worrisome, but I don’t see no, to say, bad principle in it.  Sonny ain’t got a bad habit on earth, not a-one.  They’ll ever’ one o’ the teachers tell you that.  He ain’t never been knowed to lie, an’ ez for improper language, why he wouldn’t know how to select it.  An’ ez to tattlin’ at home about what goes on in school, why, he never has did it.  The only way we knowed about him comin’ down the school-house chimbly was wife went to fetch his dinner to him, an’ she found it out.

[Illustration:  “He had been playin’ out o’ doors bare-feeted.”]

She knowed he had went to that school in the mornin’, an’ when she got there at twelve o’clock, why he wasn’t there, an’ of co’se she questioned the teacher, an’ he thess told her thet Sonny had been present at the mornin’ session, but thet he was now absent.  An’ the rest of it she picked out o’ the child’en.