The Biography of a Prairie Girl Part 24

"No touch my flesh unt blut," he cried savagely; "no touch my flesh unt blut."

A half-rec.u.mbent figure in the rear, whose pale eyes rested upon her, gave the little girl courage. "No one has been touched," she replied.

"But if the school is made noisy by a pupil, then that pupil will be punished, or will leave."

The Pole raised his gad with a grunt of rage. "Eh?" he shouted, cursing in his own tongue. He nourished his arms and stamped up and down wildly.

Of a sudden he saw the Swede boy, who had come forward and halted beside the table. His gaze fell before the pale, half-shut eyes, his voice lowered, and he ceased to swing his whip and swear. Then he hedged adroitly, speaking in broken English again and giving quick looks at the Swede boy's huge, red hands, that hung, clenched and twitching, on either side of his stalwart person.

"I hav-v no trouble wid you," he said to the little girl, his manner changing to one of apology, "bud I lick my boy mineself," and he moved down the aisle and disappeared through the door.

His son gazed after him in amazement and disgust, gave a sniff of contempt, and replied to the triumphant look on the little girl's face by extracting his geography and going to work. He played his pranks no more, and the term pa.s.sed peaceably, under the mental guidance of the little girl and the physical overlordship of the Swede boy.

ON the afternoon of the last day of school, when her pupils had said their good-bys and were straying homeward laden with their books and slates, the little girl stayed behind. And, sitting in the very place to which in former years she had raised reverent eyes, she looked round the building, every crack and corner of which had its memory.

On the bench by the door, close beside the leaky water-bucket, was the same battered, greasy basin in which the neighbor woman's daughter had placed a horse-hair one day, stoutly maintaining that in due time the hair would miraculously turn into a worm.

The broken pointer reminded her of a certain fierce encounter when, having confided to one of the Dutchman's seven that on the previous Sunday the farm-house had partaken of a dish of canned frogs' legs, she had been hailed in return as "Miss Chinaman," and the teacher had closed the event by routing her tormentors.

She thought of the morning the Dutch children first came in leather shoes, an occasion recalled by the pencil-marks behind the chart, where she had stood her punishment for too much smiling.

The stove-poker brought back the terrible moment she had dared to put her tongue against it in the icy school-room, and had had to sit with the iron cleaving to her until the teacher warmed some water.

The peg above the coal-bins reminded her of the winter day when she took down the well-rope and tied it to the faithful Luffree's collar, so that, with his keener, finer instinct for direction, he could lead teacher and pupils through a blizzard to the safety of the farm-house.

She was suddenly awakened from her day-dreams by the sound of galloping.

A horseman was approaching from the direction of the farm-house, and she hurried to the door to see who it could be. As he came near, she ran out joyfully to meet him. It was the colonel's son.

"They told me you were here," he cried, springing from his saddle. She could scarcely answer him for sheer happiness, and when he brought out her mount and they started away through the twilight, he leading the horses, she walked beside him silently.

He told her about his trip, his months at the preparatory school, his new friends, the wonders of the big city in which he had been living, hardly taking a breath in his excitement as his narrative swept along.

Suddenly he became quiet and bent toward her anxiously, penitently.

"Go on," she urged; "it's fine!"

"But I've forgotten to ask you how you've been and what you've been doing. Or whether--next year--Of course I wish awfully that you could--"

He faltered, stopped. Then, after a moment, "But you're as brave as can be to just go right on at this school and let your teacher help you all she can. It'll all count, you'll find, when you start in studying some place else."

She laughed merrily. "You haven't heard," she said. Even in the dusk he could see that her face was beaming.

"Heard what?" he asked.

"That I've been going to school, but--not in the way you think."

He halted in the road. "What do you mean?"

"I've been teaching."

IT was a long way from the school to the farm-house, yet the colonel's son and the little girl had so much to tell each other that they were not done even when the lane was reached. So they paused in its gloom, under the budding ash-boughs. A red-breasted thrush, just returned to his old haunts, twittered inquiringly at them from a twig above, and the horses nickered and champed on their bits. But they heard only each other until, having lighted the lamp in the sitting-room, the biggest brother strolled toward them, singing a gay love-song.

XIX

TOWARD THE RISING SUN

THE big brothers sat in a sullen circle about the sitting-room table, the eldest smoking, the biggest studying his fingers, the youngest whittling jackstraws. Near, silent and troubled, hovered the little girl, watching the three who, like the Fates themselves, seemed to be settling her destiny.

"So you don't want her to go," said the biggest, taking up the discussion where it had been dropped a few moments before; "though you know it was mother's last wish, an' that the youngster's always wanted it. Well, your reasons; let's hear 'em again from first to last."

"What'll she do with all this eddication she's hankerin' for?" demanded the eldest, flashing angry eyes around. "Tell me that."

"Huh!" grunted the biggest, and he threw back his head with a hearty laugh. "Well! well!" he exclaimed, when he could speak; "_that's_ what's worrying you, is it! Jus' let me ask _you_ something. Did you ever hear of anybody in your life that had an eddication fastened on to 'em an'

didn't know what t' do with it? What'll _she_ do with it? Wait till she's _got_ it. Then she an' me'll sit down an' tell you a-a-all about it."

There was a note of ridicule in his voice that fired the eldest, who made no reply, but struck the wooden bowl of his pipe so savagely against his boot-heel that it split and fell from its stem. Then he turned upon the youngest with a wave of the hand that commanded an opinion.

"Yes, what've _you_ got to say?" inquired the biggest, also turning.

The youngest shrugged his shoulders. "You two run the business to suit yourselves," he said; "I wash my hands of it." He began another jackstraw without glancing up.

"That's good," said the biggest; "that counts you out." He tilted his chair around until he faced the eldest. "I'm no dog in the manger," he continued; "I didn't have a chance to learn more than the law allows, or to go to a city school. But I wanted to, bad enough. That's why I know how _she_ feels." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the little girl. "I'm for her goin'; an', whatever comes of it, I'll stand by her.

Books is all she wants--let her have 'em. We ain't got no right to hold her back."

"She can have 'em here," interposed the eldest.

"Yes, along with work that's too hard on her. You wouldn't think of puttin' a fine animal like the blue mare on the plow; no, of course you wouldn't. There's some horses born for teamin' an' some for high-toned carriage pullin'. It happens in this case we ain't talkin' about a draft plug." He was trembling in his earnestness. After a pause he went on.

"She might stay here. That's right. But she'd never have a cent to call her own 'less she earned it teachin'. Some way or other, the boys in a family always think they own the farm; girls ain't got no share, no matter how hard they've drudged around the kitchen or the garden, or even in the fields. They can take anything that's given 'em till they marry; or they can hang around an' play nurse-girl an' kitchen-girl to their brothers' wives."

"I've always noticed," broke in the eldest, changing his ground, and ignoring what the biggest said, "that every country girl who goes to town polishes herself up like a milk-pan till she's worn off the prairie look, an' then she marries some dude with a head like an addled egg."

The biggest threw the little girl a swift, roguish glance. "I ain't afraid of the dude part of it," he said; "I'm willin' to trust her taste, anyway. I don't have to live with him; neither do you."

"Do you mean to say," asked the eldest, giving the table a blow with his fist, "that you think a city's the place for a girl, friends or no friends? n.o.body's goin' to look after her, when she leaves here, as careful as we do."

"The bishop," suggested the little girl, advancing almost imploringly.

"The bishop!" sneered the youngest.

"I thought you washed your hands of this," reminded the biggest, with a look that instantly quieted the youngest; "I guess maybe you didn't get 'em clean. At any rate, you'd better jus' make jackstraws." He faced the eldest again.

"I say the city's no place for her," the latter continued hotly. He pointed through the open door to where, above the ash-trees, a hawk was pursuing a field-sparrow that vainly, by sudden dips and rises, strove to escape its enemy. "You see that?" he cried. "Well, in every city there's a thousand hawks with their claws out waiting to swoop down on them that don't watch. She'd better not go, I say. She'll be safe and happy here. It was so long since mother'd seen a big place she forgot how it is there. It's not too late to stop gettin' ready. You'd better stay." He stood up and whirled about upon the little girl.