"Parts ain't," Harky admitted. "But parts are. He'll sell twenty tons,
always reckoning he can find somebody to buy. The rest just shrivels me
up."
Miss Cathby sighed. As soon as she proved to her own satisfaction that
these backwoods boys were not morons, they proved her wrong. Anyone able
correctly to deduce two thirds of thirty should be able to subtract
twenty from thirty. A firm adherent of the idea that sugar entices flies
where vinegar will not, Miss Cathby applied the sugar.
"Come, Harold," she coaxed. "If you have thirty potatoes and give twenty
away, how many will you have left?"
"Ten," Harky said promptly. "But we was talking about tons of hay, not
potatoes, and that ain't what crosses me up."
"What is it that you do not understand?" Miss Cathby pursued.
"What kind of critter a remainder is and how much hay does it eat?"
The fifth, seventh, and eighth grades, as represented by the sisters
Garson, filled the room with giggles. Miss Cathby rapped for order and
evolved a cunning plan to win Harky's interest and favor by discussing
something he did know.
"Do you have a good raccoon hound for the coming season, Harold?"
Miss Cathby composed herself to listen while Harky launched an
enthusiastic, and minutely detailed, description of the misadventures of
Precious Sue and the wiles of Old Joe. He needed eighteen minutes to
reach the thrilling climax, the discovery of Duckfoot and,
"His Pa's a duck," he said seriously.
"A duck!" Miss Cathby gasped.
"Not just a barnyard duck and not just a wild duck," Harky explained
patiently. "It was some big old duck, maybe older'n Old Joe himself,
that's been setting back in the woods just hoping Sue would come along."
Miss Cathby's eyes glowed with a true crusader's zeal. In all the time
Harky had spent in school and all the time he would spend there, she
could not hope to impart more than the rudiments of an education. But
here was a heaven-sent opportunity to strike at the very roots of the
ignorance and superstition that barred his march toward a more
enlightened life. Miss Cathby saw past the boy to the father who would
be. Strike Harky's chains and he would voluntarily free his children.
"That's impossible, Harold," she began.
Warming to her subject, she sketched the Garden of Eden, traced the
history of mankind, disposed of witches and witch hunters in a few
hundred well-chosen words, explained the laws of genetics, and finished
with conclusive proof that a coon hound cannot mate with a duck.
Harky listened, not without interest. When it came to telling stories,
he conceded, Miss Cathby was even better than Mun and almost as good as
Mellie Garson. Nor was she shooting wholly in the dark; Harky himself
did not believe that Duckfoot had been sired by a duck. But there was
something wanting.
For a moment he could not define the lack. Then, happily, he thought of
another of Pine Heglin's ideas. If apples were stored so they could not
roll, Pine decided, there would be fewer bruised apples. Forthwith he
constructed some latticeworks of willow withes, arranged them as
shelves, and stored his apples on them. But Pine had forgotten that
some apples are big and some small. The small ones fell through the
lattices and the big ones became jammed in them. All were bruised, and
rotted quickly, with the result that Pine had no apples at all.
Miss Cathby's lecture was like that, Harky decided. She would find an
exact niche for Old Joe, Duckfoot, Mun, everything in the world, and
she'd never stop to think that few things really belonged in exact
niches. Her ideas just didn't have room to grow in. Mun's did.
"Can you prove to me, Harold, that there is any such creature as this
witch duck?" Miss Cathby finished.
"No ma'am," said Harky, and he forebore to mention that neither could
she prove there wasn't.
By some miracle, the endless day ended. The new books that Miss Cathby
gave him strapped in the bridle rein and slung over his shoulder, Harky
walked straight up the road. He had a feeling that was justified when he
saw Dib Heglin waiting.
"Ya been to see Miss Cathby?" Dib squawked in a voice that would have
maddened a sheep. "Did Miss Cathby give ya a bathby?"
Harky shifted the bridle rein from his right hand to his left.
Effecting a gait that was supposedly a caricature of Miss Cathby's
feminine walk, and was remarkably similar to the waddle of a fat goose,
Dib came toward him.
"Ya been to see--?" he began.
They were near enough. Harky's right fist flicked out.
"Ya-ooo!" Dib shrieked.
Harky danced happily on. No day was wholly wasted if it left Dib Heglin
nursing a bloody nose.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]