Trent's Trust, and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 301 pages of information about Trent's Trust, and Other Stories.

Trent's Trust, and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 301 pages of information about Trent's Trust, and Other Stories.

“Well, Almiry,” said Mr. Hoover, turning to his wife after the first greeting with the schoolmaster was over, “this makes me feel like old times, you bet!  Why, I ain’t bin inside a schoolhouse since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.  Thar’s the benches, and the desks, and the books and all them ‘a b, abs,’ jest like the old days.  Dear!  Dear!  But the teacher in those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—­and some o’ the scholars—­no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—­was older and bigger nor you.  But times is changed:  yet look, Almiry, if thar ain’t a hunk o’ stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be!  Lord! how it all comes back!  Ez I was sayin’ only t’other day, we can’t be too grateful to our parents for givin’ us an eddication in our youth;” and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling an alma mater of sequestered gloom and cloistered erudition, gazed reverently around the new pine walls.

But Mrs. Hoover here intervened with a gracious appreciation of the schoolmaster’s youth after her usual kindly fashion.  “And don’t you forget it, Hiram Hoover, that these young folks of to-day kin teach the old schoolmasters of ’way back more’n you and I dream of.  We’ve heard of your book larnin’, Mr. Brooks, afore this, and we’re proud to hev you here, even if the Lord has not pleased to give us the children to send to ye.  But we’ve always paid our share in keeping up the school for others that was more favored, and now it looks as if He had not forgotten us, and ez if”—­with a significant, half-shy glance at her husband and a corroborating nod from that gentleman—­“ez if, reelly, we might be reckonin’ to send you a scholar ourselves.”

The young schoolmaster, sympathetic and sensitive, felt somewhat embarrassed.  The allusion to his extreme youth, mollified though it was by the salve of praise from the tactful Mrs. Hoover, had annoyed him, and perhaps added to his slight confusion over the information she vouchsafed.  He had not heard of any late addition to the Hoover family, he would not have been likely to, in his secluded habits; and although he was accustomed to the naive and direct simplicity of the pioneer, he could scarcely believe that this good lady was announcing a maternal expectation.  He smiled vaguely and begged them to be seated.

“Ye see,” said Mr. Hoover, dropping upon a low bench, “the way the thing pans out is this.  Almiry’s brother is a pow’ful preacher down the coast at San Antonio and hez settled down thar with a big Free Will Baptist Church congregation and a heap o’ land got from them Mexicans.  Thar’s a lot o’ poor Spanish and Injin trash that belong to the land, and Almiry’s brother hez set about convertin’ ’em, givin’ ’em convickshion and religion, though the most of ’em is Papists and followers of the Scarlet Woman.  Thar was an orphan, a little girl that he got outer the hands o’ them priests, kinder snatched as a brand from the burnin’, and he sent her to us to be brought up in the ways o’ the Lord, knowin’ that we had no children of our own.  But we thought she oughter get the benefit o’ schoolin’ too, besides our own care, and we reckoned to bring her here reg’lar to school.”

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Trent's Trust, and Other Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.