"Again? What's the row now? Any curtain lectures?"
"Be comforted, Phil. She's going home to-night if you'll drive her to
Landisville."
"Won't I though!" he said, with the average High School boy's disregard
of pure English. "Surest thing you know, Sis, I'll drive her home or
anywhere else. What's she doing?"
"Helping Mother cut carpet rags."
"Well, that's the only redeeming feature about her. She does help
Mother. Aunt Rebecca isn't lazy. I'm glad to be able to say one nice
thing about her. Apart from that she's generally as Millie says,
'actin' like she ate wasps.' But she can't scare me. All her ranting
goes in one ear and out the other."
"Nothing there to stop it, eh, Phil?"
"Amanda! That from you! Now I know how Caesar felt when he saw Brutus
with the mob."
"It's a case of 'Cheer up, the worst is yet to come,' I suppose, so you
might as well smile."
In this manner they bantered until they reached the Reist farmhouse.
There the boy greeted the visitor politely, as his sister had done.
"My goodness," was the aunt's greeting to him, "you got an armful of
books, too!"
"Yes. I'm going to be a lawyer, but I have to do a lot of hard studying
before I get that far."
"Umph, that's nothin' to brag about. I'd think more of you if you
stayed home and helped Amos plant corn and potatoes or tobacco."
"I'd never plant tobacco. Chewing and smoking are filthy habits and I'd
never have the stuff grow on any farm I owned."
"But the money, Philip, just think once of the money tobacco brings!
But, ach, it's for no use talkin' farm to you. You got nothin' but
books in your head. How do you suppose this place is goin' to be run
about ten years from now if Amanda teaches and you turn lawyer? Amos is
soon too old to work it and you can't depend on hired help. Then what?"
"Search me," said the boy inelegantly. "But I'm not worrying about it.
We may not want to live here ten years from now. But, Mother," he
veered suddenly, "got any pie left from dinner? I'm hungry. May I
forage?"
"Help yourself, Philip. There's a piece of cherry pie and a slice of
chocolate cake in the cellar."
"Hurray, Mother! I'm going to see that you get an extra star in your
crown some day for feeding the hungry."
"But you spoil him," said Aunt Rebecca as Phil went off to the cellar.
"And if that boy ain't always after pie! I mind how he used to eat pie
when he was little and you brought him to see us. Not that I grudged
him the pie, but I remember how he always took two pieces if he got it.
And pie ain't good for him, neither, between meals."