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It was ragged and dirty, and I was proud of it. It was a bit thin for a chilly autumn day, but in spite of Tim's expostulation I had worn it, refusing his offers of a warmer garb. I was clinging to my glory. While I had on that old uniform, I was a soldier. When I laid it aside, I should become as Aaron Kallaberger and Arnold Arker.
Josiah planted his pole on the floor and lifted himself to his feet. "It's only a fairy story, Henery," he said. "What does it illustrate?" cried Aaron Kallaberger. "Nothin', I says. We was talkin' about Mark and William Bellus, and you switches off on Leander and Ernest. To a certain pint your story agrees with what my boy told me of the doin's in the school this afternoon." "What doing's?"
It was about Six Stars school, here, and the boy's name was Ernest, and the teacher's Leander. It was told to my pap by his pap, so you can see that as a le-gend it was older than them of Henery Holmes." "It certainly sounds more interestin'," exclaimed Isaac Bolum. Old Mr. Holmes started to protest, but Aaron Kallaberger quieted him with an offering of tobacco.
Tip and Arnold picked him up and carried him, while Murphy Kallaberger and I broke a path through the bushes, and Aaron ran on to Warden's to tell them of the accident and have them prepare for the wounded man. Warden's was the nearest house, but that was a mile from the clearing, and in the woods our progress was slow.
Murphy Kallaberger smiled too, and declared that the young un took after his pa; clarifying this explanation he pointed his fat thumb over his shoulder to old Captain, beating around the underbrush. It was young Colonel's first day of life. And what a day to live, I thought, as I stroked his head and wished him luck!
"You're draggin' up a personal quarrel between you and Isaac Bolum, when we was discussin' the great problem that confronts every scholar in his day that of thrashin' the teacher." "It's a problem no scholar ever solved in the history of this walley, anyway," declared Elmer Spiker. "It ain't on the records," said Kallaberger. "There are le-gends," Isaac Bolum said.
In a little while, to receive our just recognition we old soldiers will have to parade before the public with a brass band, and the band will get most attention. Would you know that Aaron Kallaberger was a hero of Gettysburg if he didn't wear an army overcoat?" "Oh, yes," she said. "I have heard about it so often. He has told me a hundred times."
And with the point of his stick he drove the six men on the bench so close together as to give me an excellent seat. "Thrice welcome, noble he-ro, as Perry Thomas says!" shouted Aaron Kallaberger, thrusting his hand into his bosom in excellent imitation of the orator. "He's lookin' pretty spry yet, ain't he, boys?" said Isaac Bolum.
My heart was open then and warm, and I took the seven little Pulsifers to it. I took old Mrs. Bolum to it, too, for she tumbled the clamoring infants aside and in her joy forgot the ruffles in the sleeves of her wonderful purple silk. At her elbow hovered the tall, spare figure of Aaron Kallaberger.
"I can't just fetch my memory back to that particular incident, Henery," said Josiah, "but my recollection is that Gil Spoonholler held the school-house agin all comers, and that's sayin' a good deal, for we was tough as hickory when we was young." "The modern boys is soft," Aaron Kallaberger declared. "They regards the teacher in a friendlier light than they used to.
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