David Dunne Part 14

Janey kissed her impulsively. "Good-by, Carey."

"Good-by, Janey. Good-by, David."

"Good-by," he returned cheerily. Looking back, he saw her lips trembling. His gaze turned in perplexity to Mrs. Winthrop, whose eyes were dancing. "She expects you to bid her good-by the way Janey did,"

she explained.

"Oh!" said David, reddening, as two baby lips of scarlet were lifted naturally and expectantly to his.

As they drove away, the light feet of the horse making but little sound on the smooth road, Mrs. Winthrop's clear treble was wafted after them.

"One can scarcely believe that his father was a convict and his mother a washerwoman."

A lump came into the boy's throat. Janey was very quiet on the way home. When they were alone she said to him, with troubled eyes:

"Davey, is Carey going to be your sweetheart?"

His laugh was rea.s.suring.

"Why, Janey, I am just twice her age."

"She is like a little doll, isn't she, David?"

"No; like a little princess."

The next morning Little Teacher came to show them her present from Joe.

"I am sure he chose a camera so I could take your pictures to send to him," she declared.

"Miss Rhody wants her picture taken in the black silk Joe gave her. If you will take it, she won't have to spend the money he sent her," said the thoughtful David.

Little Teacher was very enthusiastic over this proposition, and offered to accompany him at once to secure the picture. Miss Rhody was greatly excited over the event. Ever since the dress had been finished she had been a devotee at the shrine of two hooks in her closet from which was suspended the long-coveted garment, waiting for an occasion that would warrant its debut. She nervously dressed for the "likeness," for which she a.s.sumed her primmest pose. A week later David sent Joe a picture of Miss Rhody standing stiff and straight on her back porch and arrayed, with all the glory of the lilies of the field, in her new silk.

CHAPTER X

When the hot, close-cropped fields took on their first suggestion of autumn and a fuller note was heard in the requiem of the songbirds, when the twilights were of purple and the morning skies delicately mackereled in gray, David entered the little, red, country schoolhouse. M'ri's tutelage and his sedulous application to Jud's schoolbooks saved him from the ignominy of being cla.s.sified with the younger children.

When he sat down to the ink-stained, pen-scratched desk that was to be his own, when he made compact piles of his new books and placed in the little groove in front of the inkwell his pen, pencils, and ruler, he turned to Little Teacher such a glowing face of ecstasy that she was quite inspired, and her sympathies and energies were at once enlisted in the cause of David's education.

It was the beginning of a new world for him. He studied with a concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him, and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon outstripped his cla.s.s, and finally his young instructress was forced to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his library to feed her young furnace.

"He takes to learning as naturally as bees to blossoms," she reported.

"He must ease off," warned Barnabas. "Young hickory needs plenty of room for full growth."

"No," disagreed the Judge, "young hickory is as strong as wrought iron. He's going to have a clear, keen mind to argue law cases."

"I think not," said M'ri. "You forget another quality of young hickory. No other wood burns with such brilliancy. David is going to be an author."

"I am afraid," wrote Joe, "that Dave won't be a first-cla.s.s ranchman.

He must be plum locoed with dreams."

This prognostication reached David's ears.

"Without dreams," he argued to Barnabas, "one would be like the pigs."

"Wal, now, Dave, mebby pigs dream. They sartain sleep a hull lot."

David laughed appreciatively.

"Dave," pursued Barnabas, "they're all figgerin' on your futur, and they're a-figgerin' wrong. Joe thinks you'll take to ranchin'. You may--fer a spell. M'ri thinks you may write books. You may do even that--fer a spell. The Jedge counts on yer takin' to the law like a duck does to water. You may, but law larnin', cow punchin', and story writin' 'll jest be steppin' stuns to what I know you air goin' ter be, and what I know is in you ter be."

"What in the world is that, Uncle Barnabas?" asked David in surprise.

"A farmer?"

"Farmer, nuthin'!" scoffed Barnabas. "Yer hain't much on farmin', Dave, though I will say yer furrers is allers straight, like everythin' else you do. Yer straight yerself. No! young hickory can bend without breakin', and thar's jest one thing I want fer you to be."

"What?" persisted the boy.

Barnabas whispered something.

The blood of the young country boy went like wine through his veins; his heart leaped with a big and mighty purpose.

"Now, remember, Dave," cautioned Barnabas, "what all work and no play done to Jack. You git yer lessons perfect, and recite them, and read a leetle of an evenin'; the rest of the time I want yer to get out and cerkilate."

November with its call to quiet woods came on, and David was eager to "cerkilate." He became animated with the spirit of sport. Red-letter Sat.u.r.days were spent with Uncle Larimy, and the far-away echo of the hunter's bullet and the scudding through the woods of startled game became new, sweet music to his ears. Rifle in hand, with dog shuffling at his heels or plunging ahead in search of game, the world was his.

Life was very full and happy, save for the one inevitable sprig of bitter--Jud! The big bully of a boy had learned that David was his equal physically and his superior mentally, but the fear of David and of David's good standing kept him from venturing out in the open; so from cover he sought by all the arts known to craftiness to hara.s.s the younger boy, whose patience this test tried most sorely.

One day when Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the word "pestiferous," David looked at her comprehendingly. "Like Jud,"

he murmured.

Many a time his young arms ached to give Jud another thrashing, but his mother's parting injunction restrained him.

"If only," he sighed, "Jud belonged to some one else!"

He vainly sought to find the hair line that divided his sense of grat.i.tude and his protection of self-respect.

Winter followed, and the farm work droned. It was a comfortable, cozy time, with breakfast served in the kitchen on a table spread with a gay, red cloth. Pennyroyal baked griddle-sized cakes, delivering them one at a time direct from the stove to the consumer. The early hour of lamplight made long evenings, which were beguiled by lesson books and story-books, by an occasional skating carnival on the river, a coasting party at Long Hill, or a "surprise" on some hospitable neighbor.

One morning he came into school with face and eyes aglow with something more than the mere delight of living. It meant mischief, pure and simple, but Little Teacher was not always discerning. She gave him a welcoming smile of sheer sympathy with his mood. She didn't smile, later, when the schoolroom was distracted by the sound of raucous laughter, feminine screams, and a fluttering of skirts as the girls scrambled to standing posture in their chairs. Astonished, she looked for the cause. The cause came her way, and the pupils had a fresh example of the miracles wrought by a mouse, for Little Teacher, usually the personification of dignity and repose, screamed l.u.s.tily and scudded chairward with as much rapidity as that displayed by the scurrying mouse as it chased for the corner and disappeared through a knothole.

As soon as the noiseful glee had subsided, Little Teacher sought to recover her prided self-possession. In a voice resonant with sternness, she commanded silence, gazing wrathfully by chance at little Tim Wiggins.

"'T was David done it," he said in deprecating self-defense, imagining himself accused.