I told him how they had stared at me, and had even laughed and made fun of me.
He said, 'Aw, I don't think they were making fun of you, were they?'
'Yes, they were,' I said, 'and to beat it all, the boys jumped on me and knocked me down in the dirt. If it hadn't been for the marshal, I would have taken a beating.'
Papa said, 'So you met the marshal. What did you think of him?'
I told him he was a nice man. He had bought me a bottle of soda pop.
At the mention of soda pop, the blue eyes of my sisters opened wide. They started firing questions at me, wanting to know what color it was, and what it tasted like. I told them it was strawberry and it bubbled and tickled when I drank it, and it made me burp.
The eager questions of my three little sisters had had an effect on my father and mother.
Papa said, 'Billy, I don't want you to feel badly about the people in town. I don't think they were poking fun at you, anyway not like you think they were.'
'Maybe they weren't,' I said, 'but I still don't want to ever live in town. It's too crowded and you couldn't get a breath of fresh air.'
In a sober voice my father said, 'Some day you may have to live in town. Your mother and I don't intend to live in these hills all our lives. It's no place to raise a family. A man's children should have an education. They should get out and see the world and meet people.'
'I don't see why we have to move to town to get an education,' I said. 'Hasn't Mama taught us how to read and write?'
'There's more to an education than just reading and writing,' Papa said. 'Much more.'
I asked him when he thought we'd be moving to town.
'Well, it'll be some time yet,' he said. 'We don't have the money now, but I'm hoping some day we will.'
From the stove where she was heating salt water for my feet, Mama said in a low voice, '111 pray every day and night for that day to come. I don't want you children to grow up without an education, not even knowing what a bottle of soda pop is, or ever seeing the inside of a schoolhouse. I don't think I could stand that. I'll just keep praying and some day the good Lord may answer my prayer.'
I told my mother I had seen the schoolhouse in town. Again I had to answer a thousand questions for my sisters. I told them it was made of red brick and was bigger than Grandpa's store, a lot bigger. There must have been at least a thousand kids going to school there.
I told all about the teeter-totters, the swings made out of log chains, the funny-looking pipe that ran up the side of the building, and how I had climbed up in it and slid out like the other kids. I didn't tell them how I came out.
'I think that was a fire escape,' Papa said.
'Fire escape!' I said. 'It looked like a slide to me.'
'Did you notice where it made that bend up at the top?' he asked.
I nodded my head.
'Well, inside the school there's a door,' he said. 'If the school gets on fire, they open the door. The children jump hi the pipe and slide out to safety.'
'Boy, that's a keen way of getting out of a fire,' I said.
'Well, it's getting late,' Papa said. 'We'll talk about this some other time. We'd better get to bed as we have a lot of work to do tomorrow,'
My pups were put in the corncrib for the night. I covered them with shucks and kissed them good night.
The next day was a busy one for me. With the hampering help of my sisters I made the little doghouse.
Papa cut the ends off his check lines and gave them to me for collars. With painstaking care, deep in the tough leather I scratched the name 'Old Dan' on one and 'Little Ann' on the other. With a nail and a rock two holes were punched in each end of the straps. I put them around their small necks and laced the ends together with bailing wire.
