“He was black marveled at the hall all right,” said Joe grimly.

“What for?”

“It ain’t none of my business to tell what for,” said Joe, though his lips ached to tell what he knew.

“Maw says all you fellows are jealous ’cause he talks so pretty and wears such stylish clothes.”

“We might, too, if we got ’em like he done,” Joe began, then checked himself.  “Say, Mittie, why don’t yer maw like me?”

“She says you haven’t got any school education and don’t talk good grammar.”

“Don’t I talk good grammar?” asked Joe anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Mittie; “that’s what she says.  How long did you go to school?”

“Me?  Oh, off and on ’bout two year.  The old man was always poorly, and Maw, she had to work out, till me an’ the boys done got big enough to work.  ’Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids.  Don’t I talk like other fellers, Mittie?”

“You talk better than some,” said Mittie loyally.

After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully.  He thought of the few educated people he knew—­the boss at the shops, the preacher up on Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade.  Yes, there was a difference.  Being clean and wearing good clothes were not the only things.

When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney’s school satchel from the top of the wardrobe.  Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.

One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.

“Berney she ain’t but fourteen an’ she gits on to ’em,” he said to himself; “looks like I orter.”

Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.

“That you, Joe?” asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later.  “I didn’t know you’d come.  Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank’s Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him.”

“It’s twelve o’clock,” remonstrated Joe.

“I know it,” said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, “but I reckon you better go.  The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!”

“All right,” said Joe with a resignation born of experience, “but don’t you go and put no more of the kids in my bed.  Jack and Gus kick the stuffin’ out of me now.”

And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus.

The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.