"I have to leave this house--I have to leave it to-morrow," she said.
"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm just
crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These children
must go to school. They must all go--the darned lot of 'em."
SIXTH CHAPTER
Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I
first became known to the doctor's boy.
It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in
the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The
church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house,
under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while
I made my voice as soft as I could and said:
"Mamma, what is it'?"
"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.
I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the
window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty
air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing,
and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father's
loud voice asking the singers into the house.
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