There was, as well, a superstition about the fate of a woman who would marry a Birge, for all the Birges’ wives, excepting the rumored squaw, had been adoring, meek individuals who lived until they bore a son and then died, leaving some one else to bring him up!
Dan had been raised by Submit Curler, Oyster Jim, Ali Baba, Betsey Pilrig, Hopeful Whittier—and himself. He began domineering over his father, as a new tyrant always wins easily over an old one, before he was a year old. At three the Corners looked aghast at his antics, and shivered at his vocabulary.
“Well,” Thurley Precore answered with spirit equal to Dan’s, “you think you’re smart, because your pa has money, but there’s lots of people smarter than your pa, and I think, if a man has to choose between knowing how to spell and everything and having a little money, he better choose learning. Because he’ll be smart enough to think up a way to take money from the man that don’t know anything. Wait and see. You better go to school while you got the chance and learn—you’ll need it some day. My goodness, I wisht we’d ever stop in one place long enough to let me go to school. I have to just grab for all I know. The longest we stay anywheres is winters—out in Iowa—and an old hoss thief, Aggie Tim, traveled with us for awhile and he taught me my tables and lightnin’ calculating. I bet you don’t know any—I bet I know more’n you do—”
“Name the presidents of the United States,” pointing an accusing finger at him.
“McKinley—but he’s shot and we got Roosevelt,” Daniel bragged.
“I mean from the start of this country—Washington—”
“Oh, sure, everybody knows about him, he never told a lie—like fun he didn’t—we don’t have school on his birthday. But I never have to go to school, if I don’t want to. I can stay in bed until nine o’clock and have pork sausage and griddle cakes and coffee sent up to my room. I can make Mrs. Hawkins send ’em up, even if she puts it on the bill—my father lets me and he gives me a dollar at a time and lets me spend it as I like. Sometimes he gives me beer to drink, and he takes me to cities on convention trips—he belongs to lodges and he gets himself made delegate—you ought to see the hotels we stay at with music playing for all the meals. I get a new suit and a whole lot of stuff to play with and so much candy that I have to stay in bed and just holler with the stomach-ache—there!” He paused with a characteristic Birge tilt of the head.