“You’ve been takin’ your time ‘bout comin’ home,” she remarked, “an’ I reckon you’re powerful hungry.  You can sit down if you want to.”

She was long and lean and withered, with a chronic facial neuralgia, which gave her an irritable expression and a querulous voice.  For the past several years Nicholas had never seen her without a large cotton handkerchief bound tightly about her face.  She had been the boy’s aunt before she married his father, and her affection for him was proved by her allowing no one to harry him except herself.

“How’s your face, ma?” asked Nicholas with the indifference of habit as he took his seat at the table, while Sarah Jane went to the door to call her father.  When Burr came in the inquiry was repeated.

“Face any easier, Marthy?” It was a form that had been gone through with at every meal since the malady began, and Marthy Burr, while she deplored its insincerity, would have resented its omission.

“Don’t you all trouble ’bout my neuralgy,” she returned with resigned exasperation as she stood up to pour the coffee out of the large tin boiler.  “It’s mine, an’ I’ve borne worse things, I reckon, which ain’t sayin’ that ‘tain’t near to takin’ my head off.”

Amos Burr drank his coffee without replying, the perspiration standing in drops on his large, freckled face and shining on his heavy eyebrows.  Presently he looked at Nicholas, who was eating abstractedly, his gaze on his plate.

“I got that thar piece of land broke to-day,” he said, “an’ I reckon you can take the one-horse harrow and go over it to-morrow.  Them peanuts ought to hev’ been in the ground two weeks ago—­”

“They ain’t hulled yet,” interrupted his wife.  “Sairy Jane ain’t done more’n half of ’em.  She and Nick can do the balance after supper.  Hurry up, Sairy Jane, and get through.  Nannie, don’t you touch another slice of that middlin’.  You’ll be frettin’ all night.”

Nicholas looked up nervously.  “I don’t want to harrow the land to-morrow, pa,” he began; “the judge said I might come in to school—­”

Amos Burr looked at him helplessly.  “Wall, I never!” he exclaimed.

“Did you ever hear the likes?” said his wife.

“I can go, pa, can’t I?” asked Nicholas.

“He can go, pa, can’t he?” repeated Sarah Jane, looking up with her mouth wide open and full of corn bread.

Burr shook his head and looked at his wife.

“I don’t see as I can get any help,” he said.  “You’re as good as a hand, and I can’t spare you.”  Then he concluded with a touch of irritation, “I don’t see as you want any more schoolin’.  You can read and write now a heap better’n I can.”

Nicholas choked over his bread and his lips trembled.

“I—­I don’t want to be like you, pa!” he cried breathlessly, and the unshed tears stung his eyelids.  “I want to be different!”

Burr looked up stolidly.  “I don’t see as you want any more schoolin’,” he repeated stubbornly, but his wife came sharply to the boy’s assistance.