soon as the back door had closed behind
them, "Tom, I'm bein' made a good deal more of than I deserve, but
'tain't any of my doin's, and men that ort to know keep tellin' me that
I'm doin' a lot o' good in town. Once in a while, though, somebody
laughs at me,--laughs at somethin' I say. It's been hurtin' me, an' I
told Judge Prency so the other day; but he said, 'Sam, it isn't what
you say, but the way you say it.' You see, I never had no eddication; I
was sent to school, but I played hookey most of the time."

"Did you, though?" asked Tom, with some inflections that caused the
cobbler to look up in time to see that his son was looking at him
admiringly; there could be no doubt about it. Sam had never been looked
at that way before by his big boy, and the consequence was an entirely
new and pleasurable sensation. After thinking it over a moment, he
replied,--

"Yes, I did, an' any fun that was to be found I looked after in them
days. I don't mind tellin' you that I don't think I found enough to pay
for the trouble; but things was as they was. Now I wish I'd done
diff'rent; but it's too late to get back what I missed by dodgin'
lessons. Tom, if I could talk better, it would be a good thing for me;
but I ain't got no time to go to school. You've been to school a lot:
why can't you come to the shop with me, an' sit down an' tell me where
an' how I don't talk like other folks?"

Tom indulged in a long and convulsive chuckle.

"When you've done laughin' at your father, Tom," continued Sam, "he'll
be glad to have you say somethin' that'll show him that you ain't as
mean an' low down as some folks think you be."

"I ain't no school-teacher," said Tom, "an' I ain't learned no fancy
ways of talkin'!"

"I don't expect you to tell me mor'n you know," said the parent, "but
if you've got the same flesh an' blood as me, you'll stand by me when
I'm bothered. The puppies of a dog would do that much for their parent
in trouble."

Tom did not answer; he sulked a little while, but finally entered the
shop with his father and sat down, searched his mind a few moments, and
then recalled and repeated two injunctions which his last teacher had
most persistently urged upon her pupils,--that they should not drop
letters from the ends of words, nor say "ain't" or "hain't." Then Sam
devoted himself to practice by talking aloud, and Tom became so amused
by the changes in his father's intonation that he finally was obliged
to go home and t