Patchwork Part 5

"But she had no business to laugh at me, had she, pop?"

"You're too touchy," he said kindly. "But did you say the lady was on Mollie Stern's porch?"

"Yes."

"Then I guess it was her cousin from Philadelphia, the one that was elected to teach the school on the hill for next winter."

"Oh, pop, not our school?"

"Yes. Anyhow, her cousin was elected yesterday to teach your school. It seems she wanted to teach in the country and Mollie's pop is friends with a lot of our directors and they voted her in."

"I ain't goin' to school then!" Phbe almost sobbed. "I don't like her, I don't want to go to her school; she laughed at me."

"Come, come," the father laid his hands on her head and spoke gently yet in a tone that she respected. "You mustn't get worked up over it. She's a nice young lady, and it will be something new to have a teacher from Philadelphia. Anyhow, it's a long ways yet till school begins."

"I'm glad it is."

"Come," interrupted the aunt, "help now to dish up. It's time to eat once. We're Pennsylvania Dutch, so what's the use gettin' cross when we're called that?"

"Yes," Phbe's father said, smiling, "I'm a Dutchie too, but I'm a big Dutchie."

Phbe smiled, but all through the meal and during the days that followed she thought often of the rose. Her heart was bitter toward the new teacher and she resolved never, never to like her!

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW TEACHER

THE first Monday in September was the opening day of the rural school on the hill. Phbe woke that morning before daylight. At four she heard her Aunt Maria tramp about in heavy shoes. It was Monday and wash-day and to Maria Metz the two words were so closely linked that nothing less than serious illness or death could part them.

"Ach, my," Phbe sighed as she turned again under her red and green quilt, "this is the first day of school! Wish Aunt Maria'd forget to call me till it's too late to go."

At five-thirty she heard her father go down-stairs and soon after that came her aunt's loud call, "Phbe, it's time to get up. Get up now and get down for I have breakfast made."

"Yes," came the dreary answer.

"Now don't you go asleep again."

"No, I'm awake. Shall I dress right aways for school?"

"No. Put on your old brown gingham once."

Phbe made a wry face. "Ugh, that ugly brown gingham! What for did anybody ever buy brown when there are such pretty colors in the stores?"

A moment later she pushed back the gay quilt and sat on the edge of the bed. The first gleams of day-break sent bright streaks of light into her room as she sat on the high walnut bed and swung her bare feet back and forth.

"It's the first time I wasn't glad for school," she soliloquized softly.

"I used to could hardly wait still, and I'd be glad this time if we didn't have that teacher from Phildelphy. Miss Virginia Lee her name is, and she's pretty like the name, but I don't like her! Guess she's that stuck up, comin' from the city, that she'll laugh all the time at us country people. I don't like people that poke fun at me, you bet I don't! I vonder now, mebbe I am funny to look at, that she laughed at me. But if I was I think somebody would 'a' told me long ago. I don't see what for she laughed so at me."

She sprang from the bed and ran to the window, pulled the cord of the green shade and sent it rattling to the top. Then she stood on tiptoe before the mirror in the walnut bureau, but the gla.s.s was hung too high for a satisfactory scrutiny of her features. She pushed a cane-seated chair before the bureau, knelt upon it and brought her face close to the gla.s.s.

"Um," she surveyed herself soberly. "Well, now, mebbe if my hair was combed I'd look better."

She pulled the tousled braids, opened them and shook her head until the golden hair hung about her face in all its glory.

"Why"--she gasped at the sudden change she had wrought, then laughed aloud from sheer childish happiness in her own miracle--"Why," she said gladly, "I ain't near so funny lookin' with my hair opened and down instead of pulled back in two tight plaits! But I wish Aunt Maria'd leave me have curls. I'd have a lot, and long ones, longer'n Mary Warner's."

"Phbe!" Aunt Maria's voice startled the little girl. "What in the world are you doing lookin' in that gla.s.s so? And your knees on a cane-bottom chair! You know better than that. What for are you lookin' at yourself like that? You ought to be ashamed to be so vain."

Phbe left the chair and looked at her aunt.

"Why," she said in an amazed voice, "I wasn't being vain! I was just lookin' to see if I am funny lookin' that it made Miss Lee laugh at me.

And I found out that I'm much nicer to look at with my hair open than in plaits. You say still I mustn't have curls, but can't you see how much nicer I look this way----"

"Ach," interrupted her aunt, "don't talk so dumb! I guess you ain't any funnier lookin' than other people, and if you was it wouldn't matter long as you're a good girl."

"But I wouldn't be a good girl if I looked like some people I saw a'ready. If I had such big ears and crooked nose and big mouth----"

"Phbe, you talk vonderful! Where do you get such nonsense put in your head?"

"I just think it and then I say it. But was that bad? I didn't mean it for bad."

She looked so like a cherub of absolute innocency with her deep blue eyes opened wide in wonder, her golden hair tumbled about her face and streaming over the shoulders of her white muslin nightgown, that Aunt Maria, though she had never heard of Reynolds' cherubs, was moved by the adorable picture.

"I know, Phbe," she said kindly, "that you want to be a good girl. But you say such funny things still that I vonder sometimes if I'm raisin'

you the right way. Come, hurry, now get dressed. Your pop's goin' way over to the field near Snavely's and you want to give him good-bye before he goes to work."

"I'll hurry, Aunt Maria, honest I will," the child promised and began to dress.

A little while later when she appeared in the big kitchen her father and Aunt Maria were already eating breakfast. With her hair drawn back into one uneven braid and a rusty brown dress upon her she seemed little like the adorable figure of the looking-gla.s.s, but her father's face lighted as he looked at her.

"So, Phbe," he said, a teasing twinkle in his eyes, "I see you get up early to go to school."

"But I ain't glad to go." She refused to smile at his words.

"Ach, yes," he coaxed, "you be a good girl and like your new teacher.

She's nice. I guess you'll like her when you know her once."

"Mebbe so," was the unpromising answer as she slipped the straps of a blue checked ap.r.o.n over her shoulders, b.u.t.toned it in the back and took her place at the table.

Breakfast at the Metz farm was no light meal. Between the early morning meal and the twelve o'clock dinner much hard work was generally accomplished and Maria Metz felt that a substantial foundation was necessary. Accordingly, she carried to the big, square cherry table in the kitchen an array of well-filled dishes. There was always a gla.s.s dish of stewed prunes or seasonable fresh fruit; a plate piled high with thick slices of home-made bread; several dishes of spreadings, as the jellies, preserves or apple-b.u.t.ter of that community are called. There was a generous square of home-made b.u.t.ter, a platter of home-cured ham or sausage, a dish of fried or creamed potatoes, a smaller dish of pickles or beets, and occasionally a dome of glistening cup cheese. The meal would have been considered incomplete without a liberal supply of cake or cookies, coffee in huge cups and yellow cream in an old-fashioned blue pitcher.

That morning Aunt Maria had prepared an extra treat, a platter of golden slices of fried mush.

The two older people partook heartily of the food before them but the child ate listlessly. Her aunt soon exclaimed, "Now, Phbe, you must eat or you'll get hungry till recess. You know this is the first day of school and you can't run for a cookie if you get hungry. You ain't eatin'; you feel bad?"