Ernest was just his opposite. He was a
chunky boy with white hair and pale eyes. He was a nice boy when let
alone, but in the whole fifteen years of his life he'd never had no
call to bound Kansas or tell the capital of Californy outside of school
hours, so he regarded Leander with a fierce and childlike hatred. But
Ernest had a noble streak in him, too. For himself he would 'a'
suffered in silence. It was the constant oppression of the helpless
little ones that saddened him. It was maddenin' to have to sit silent
every day while tiny girls, no older than ten, was being hounded from
one end of the g'ography to the other. He seen small boys, shavers
under eight, scratchin' holes in their heads with slate-pencils, tryin'
to make out why two and two was four; he seen girls, be-yutiful young
girls of his own age, drove almost to distraction by black-boards full
of diagrams from the grammar-book. And allus before him, the inspirin'
note of the whole systematic system of torturin' the young, was the
rod; broodin' over it all, like a black cloud, was Leander's
repytation, was the memory of the boys as had gone before.
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