"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,"
insisted Ben. "He was a wise man, like my father, and that made
the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight.
And so could my father--couldn't he, mother?"
"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,"
said Letty, frowning. "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."
"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the
caps from the tub. "When your brother began, you ought to have
waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look,
pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!
Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter
behave so." (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much
majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between repressed
volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive,
life was already a painful affair.) "Now, Ben."
"Well--oh--well--why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they
were all blockheads, and--I can't tell it just how you told it--
but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything--"
"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without
a wish to make her mother repent.
"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously. "But that isn't
a good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates.
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