Читать книгу Goose Creek Folks. A Story of the Kentucky Mountains онлайн

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The Bills family were inclined to consider the occasion a mournful one. If the young people had been going to the ends of the earth instead of but fifty miles away, they could not have been more pessimistic. That Martin and Talitha had returned unharmed seemed to have no weight with them.

“Sho, now,” objected the blacksmith jovially, “I ain’t goin’ ter cornsider my young-uns as lost ter the mountings. I ’low they’re jest goin’ ter git some larnin’ and come back ter help me.”

“Book larnin’ ain’t goin’ ter give ’em muscle,” objected the elder Bills.

“Law, no, they’ve got ’nough of thet now. I ain’t raisin’ a passel of prizefighters. If Kid stays home ter help me one blacksmith’s ’nough in a family, I reckon. I’ve heerd the Bentville school is great on idees, and thet’s jest what these mountings air needin’ bad.”

“You talk like we war plumb idjits, Enoch Shackley,” cried Ann Bills, her black eyes snapping angrily. “I’ve heerd tell o’ folks you’d never ’low had any head stuff’in’ till their skulls got a crack and you could git a sight of their brains, but I never heerd as this part of the kentry war noted fer sech. Me and my fambly hain’t never had ter go borrowin’ fer idees.”