“It don’t make no odds,” said Hephzibah sturdily, but looking down at the same time.  “He’ll get it out of us some other way.”

“Get it out of you?” said Daisy.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gets it out of everybody,” said Hephzibah.  “Tain’t no odds.”

“But Hephzibah, if those trees were yours, would you like to have Mr. Lamb come and take the nuts away?”

“No.  I’d get somebody to shoot him.”

Daisy hardly knew how to go along with her discourse; Hephzibah’s erratic opinions started up so fast.  She looked at her little rough pupil in absolute dismay.  Hephzibah shewed no consciousness of having said anything remarkable.  Very sturdy she looked; very assured in her judgment.  Daisy eyed her rough bristling hair, with an odd kind of feeling that it would not be more difficult to comb down into smoothness than the unregulated thoughts of her mind.  She must begin gently.  But Daisy’s eyes grew most wistfully earnest.

“Would you shoot Mr. Lamb for taking away your nuts?”

“Just as lieves.”

“Then how do you think he would feel about your taking his nuts?”

“I don’t care!”

“But, Hephzibah, listen.  Do you know what the Bible says?  It says, that we must do to other people just what we would like to have them do to us in the same things.”

“Then he oughtn’t to have sot such a price on his meat,” said Hephzibah.

“But then,” said Daisy, “what would it be right for you to do about his nuts?”

“I don’t care,” said Hephzibah. “’Tain’t no odds.  I’m a going to get ’em.  I guess it’s time for me to go home.”

“But Hephzibah,—­you have not done your lesson yet.  I want you to learn all this row to-day.  The next is, f, a, fa.”

“That don’t mean nothin’,” said Hephzibah.

“But you want to learn it, before you can go on to what does mean something.”

“I don’t guess I do,” said Hephzibah.

“Don’t you want to learn to read?”

“Yes, but that ain’t readin’.”

“But you cannot learn to read without it,” said Daisy.

Under this urging, Hephzibah did consent to go down the column of two-letter syllables.

“Ain’t you going with me after them nuts?” she said as soon as the bottom of the page was reached.  “I’ll shew you a rabbit’s nest.  La! it’s so pretty!”

“I hope you will not take the nuts, Hephzibah, without Mr. Lamb’s leave.”

“I ain’t going to ask his leave,” said Hephzibah.  “He wouldn’t give it to me, besides.  It’s fun, I tell you.”

“It is wrong,” said Daisy.  “I don’t think there’s any fun in doing what’s wrong.”

“It is fun, though, I tell you,” said Hephzibah.  “It’s real sport.  The nuts come down like rain; and we get whole baskets full.  And then, when you crack ’em, I tell you, they are sweet’”

“Hephzibah, do you know what the Bible says?”