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opportunity to speak to her alone, ā€œI wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to the State University.ā€

She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.

ā€œBut why, Claude?ā€

ā€œWell, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the Temple arenā€™t much good. Most of them are just preachers who couldnā€™t make a living at preaching.ā€

The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into his motherā€™s face. ā€œSon, donā€™t say such things. I canā€™t believe but teachers are more interested in their students when they are concerned for their spiritual development, as well as the mental. Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State University are not Christian men; they even boast of it, in some cases.ā€

ā€œOh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate they know their subjects. These little pin-headed preachers like Weldon do a lot of harm, running about the country talking. Heā€™s sent around to pull in students for his own school. If he didnā€™t get them heā€™d lose his job. I wish heā€™d never got me. Most of the fellows who flunk out at the State come to us, just as he did.ā€

ā€œBut how can there be any serious study where they give so much time to athletics and frivolity? They pay their football coach a larger salary than their President. And those fraternity houses are places where boys learn all sorts of evil. Iā€™ve heard that dreadful things go on in them sometimes. Besides, it would take more money, and you couldnā€™t live as cheaply as you do at the Chapinsā€™.ā€

Claude made no reply. He stood before her frowning and pulling at a calloused spot on the inside of his palm. Mrs. Wheeler looked at him wistfully. ā€œIā€™m sure you must be able to study better in a quiet, serious atmosphere,ā€ she said.

He sighed and turned away. If his mother had been the least bit unctuous, like Brother Weldon, he could have told her many enlightening facts. But she was so trusting and childlike, so faithful by nature and so ignorant of life as he knew it, that it was hopeless to argue with her. He could shock her and make her fear the world even more than she did, but he could never make her understand.

His mother was old-fashioned. She thought dancing and card-playing dangerous pastimesā ā€”only rough people did such things when she was a girl in Vermontā ā€”and ā€œworldlinessā€ only another word for wickedness. According to her conception of education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one, was already explained; and so was its destiny, which lay before. The mind should remain obediently within the theological concept of history.

Nat Wheeler didnā€™t care where his son went to school, but he, too, took it for granted that the religious institution was cheaper than the State University; and that because the students there looked shabbier they were less likely to become too knowing, and to be offensively intelligent at home. However, he referred the matter to Bayliss one day when he was in town.

ā€œClaudeā€™s got some notion he wants to go to the State University this winter.ā€

Bayliss at once assumed that wise, better-be-prepared-for-the-worst expression which had made him seem shrewd and seasoned from boyhood. ā€œI donā€™t see any point in changing unless heā€™s got good reasons.ā€

ā€œWell, he thinks that bunch of parsons at the Temple donā€™t make first-rate teachers.ā€

ā€œI expect they can teach Claude quite a bit yet. If he gets in with that fast football crowd at the State, thereā€™ll be no holding him.ā€ For some reason Bayliss detested football. ā€œThis athletic business is a good deal overdone. If Claude wants exercise, he might put in the fall wheat.ā€

That night Mr. Wheeler brought the subject up at supper, questioned Claude, and tried to get at the cause of his discontent. His manner was jocular, as usual, and Claude hated any public discussion of his personal affairs. He was afraid of his fatherā€™s humour when it got too near him.

Claude might have enjoyed the large and somewhat gross cartoons with which Mr. Wheeler enlivened daily life, had they been of any other authorship. But he unreasonably wanted his father to be the most dignified, as he was certainly the handsomest and most intelligent, man in the community. Moreover, Claude couldnā€™t bear ridicule very well. He squirmed before he was hit; saw it coming, invited it. Mr. Wheeler had observed this trait in him when he was a little chap, called it false pride, and often purposely outraged his feelings to harden him, as he had hardened Claudeā€™s mother, who was afraid of everything but schoolbooks and prayer-meetings when he first married her. She was still more or less bewildered, but she had long ago got over any fear of him and any dread of living with him. She accepted everything about her husband as part of his rugged masculinity, and of that she was proud, in her quiet way.

Claude had never quite forgiven his father for some of his practical jokes. One warm spring day, when he was a boisterous little boy of five, playing in and out of the house, he heard his mother entreating Mr. Wheeler to go down to the orchard and pick the cherries from a tree that hung loaded. Claude remembered that she persisted rather complainingly, saying that the cherries were too high for her to reach, and that even if she had a ladder it would hurt her back. Mr. Wheeler was always annoyed if his wife referred to any physical weakness, especially if she complained about her back. He got up and went out. After a while he returned. ā€œAll right now, Evangeline,ā€ he called cheerily as he passed through the kitchen. ā€œCherries wonā€™t give you any trouble. You and Claude can run along and pick ā€™em as easy as can be.ā€

Mrs. Wheeler trustfully put on her sunbonnet, gave Claude a little pail and took

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