The Brown Mouse Part 15

"It won't bother you to take care of it," said he, "but if you're not too extravagant it will pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars over."

Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium was paid to the person receiving the honor, then. What a relief!

"All right," he exclaimed. "I'll be glad to come!"

"Let's consider that settled," said the professor. "And now I must be going back to the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes next. I tell you, the winter wheat crop has been--"

But Jim was not able to think much of the winter wheat problem as they went back to the auditorium. He was worth putting on the program at a state meeting! He was worth the appreciation of a college professor, trained to think on the very matters Jim had been so long mulling over in isolation and blindness! He was actually worth paying for his thoughts.

Calista Simms thought she saw something shining and saint-like about the homely face of her teacher as he came to her at her post in the room in which the school exhibit was held. Calista was in charge of the little children whose work was to be demonstrated that day, and was in a state of exaltation to which her starved being had hitherto been a stranger.

Perhaps there was something similar in her condition of fervent happiness to that of Jim. She, too, was doing something outside the sordid life of the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have been glad to die for them--and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of the town girls who pa.s.sed about among the exhibits, she was poorly dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of wellbeing and happiness in Calista's soul at the feeling of her whole clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the "boughten" cloak she wore--and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have understood Calista's joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson's eyes were on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the pa.s.sions quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.

"h.e.l.lo, Calista!" said Jim. "How are you enjoying it?"

"Oh!" said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. "Ah'm enjoying myse'f right much, Mr. Jim."

"Any of the home folks coming in to see?"

"Yes, seh," answered Calista. "All the school board have stopped by this morning."

Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie Woodruff. When Sim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended hand, he felt the repulsion of their att.i.tudes and sheered off on some pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.

They resumed their talk.

"I'm a Dimocrat," said Con Bonner, "and you fellers is Republicans, and we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party lines."

"The fight about the teacher," said Haakon Peterson, "is a t'ing of the past. All our candidates got odder yobs now."

"Yes," said Ezra Bronson. "Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she could get it"

"And as I was sayin'," went on Bonner, "I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin.

An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I got for him." "You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can," said Peterson. "I tank you better run."

"What say, Ez?" asked Bonner.

"Suits me all right," said Bronson. "I guess we three have had our fight out and understand each other."

"All right," returned Bonner, "I'll take the office again. Let's not start too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?"

"Suits me," said Bronson.

"Wery well," said Peterson.

"I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts," said Bonner. "He rounded up that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?"

"I tank not," replied Peterson. "I tank he was yust interested in how Yennie managed it."

"Looked mighty like he was managin' the demonstration," said Bonner. "What d'ye think, Ez?"

"Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with," said Bronson. "I reckon he was just interested in Jennie's dilemmer. It ain't reasonable that Colonel Woodruff after the p'litical career he's had would mix up in school district politics."

"Well," said Bonner, "he seems to take a lot of interest in this exhibition here. I think we'd better watch the colonel. That decision of Jennie's might have been because she's stuck on Jim Irwin, or because she takes a lot of notice of what her father says."

"Or she might have thought the decision was right," said Bronson. "Some people do, you know."

"Right!" scoffed Bonner. "In a pig's wrist! I tell you that decision was crooked."

"Vell," said Haakon Peterson, "talk of crookedness wit' Yennie Woodruff don't get wery fur wit' me."

"Oh, I don't mean anything bad, Haakon," replied Bonner, "but it wasn't an all-right decision. I think she's stuck on the guy."

The caucus broke up after making sure that the three members of the school board would be as one man in maintaining a hostile front to Jim Irwin and his tenure of office. It looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a little district wherein there were scarcely twenty-five votes. The three members of the board with their immediate friends and dependents could muster two or three ballots each--and who was there to oppose them? Who wanted to be school director? It was a post of no profit, little honor and much vexation. And yet, there are always men to be found who covet such places. Curiously there are always those who covet them for no ascertainable reason, for often they are men who have no theory of education to further, and no fondness for affairs of the intellect. In the Woodruff District, however, the inc.u.mbents saw no candidate in view who could be expected to stand up against the rather redoubtable Con Bonner.

Jim's hold upon his work seemed fairly secure for the term of his contract, since Jennie had decided that he was competent; and after that he himself had no plans. He could not expect to be retained by the men who had so bitterly attacked him. Perhaps the publicity of his Ames address would get him another place with a sufficient stipend so that he could support his mother without the aid of the little garden, the cows and the fowls--and perhaps he would ask Colonel Woodruff to take him back as a farm-hand. These thoughts thronged his mind as he stood apart and alone after his rebuff by the caucusing members of the school board.

"I don't see," said a voice over against the cooking exhibit, "what there is in this to set people talking? b.u.t.tonholes! Cookies! Humph!"

It was Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs.

Bronson, whose att.i.tude was that of a person torn between conflicting influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle Peterson that while he was still loyal to the school board, and hence perforce opposed to Jim Irwin, and resentful to the decision of the county superintendent, his adhesion to the inst.i.tutions of the Woodruff District as handed down by the fathers was not quite of the thick-and-thin type.

For he had suggested that Jennie might have been sincere in rendering her decision, and that some people agreed with her: so Mrs. Bronson, while consorting with the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness when the school and its work was condemned. Was not her Newton in charge of a part of this show! Had he not taken great interest in the project? Was he not an open and defiant champion of Jim Irwin, and a constant and enthusiastic attendant upon, not only his cla.s.ses, but a variety of evening and Sat.u.r.day affairs at which the children studied arithmetic, grammar, geography, writing and spelling, by working on cows, pigs, chickens, grains, gra.s.ses, soils and weeds? And had not Newton become a better boy--a wonderfully better boy? Mrs. Bronson's heart was filled with resentment that she also could not be enrolled among Jim Irwin's supporters. And when Mrs. Bonner sneered at the b.u.t.tonholes and cookies, Mrs. Bronson, knowing how the little fingers had puzzled themselves over the one, and young faces had become floury and red over the other, flared up a little.

"And I don't see," said she, "anything to laugh at when the young girls do the best they can to make themselves capable housekeepers. I'd like to help them." She turned to Mrs. Bonner as if to add "If this be treason, make the most of it!" but that lady was far too good a diplomat to be cornered in the same enclosure with a rupture of relations.

"And quite right, too," said she, "in the proper place, and at the proper time. The little things ought to be helped by every real woman--of course!"

"Of course," repeated Mrs. Bronson.

"At home, now, and by their mothers," added Mrs. Bonner.

"Well," said Mrs. Bronson, "take them Simms girls, now. They have to have help outside their home if they are ever going to be like other folks."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bonner, "and a lot more help than a farm-hand can give 'em in school. Pretty poor trash, they, and I shouldn't wonder if there was a lot we don't know about why they come north."

"As for that," replied Mrs. Bronson, "I don't know as it's any of my business so long as they behave themselves."

Again Mrs. Bonner felt the situation getting out of hand, and again she returned to the task of keeping Mrs. Bronson in alignment with the forces of accepted Woodruff District conditions.

"Ain't it some of our business?" she queried. "I wonder now! By the way Newtie keeps his eye on that Simms girl, I shouldn't wonder if it might turn out your business."

"Pshaw!" scoffed Mrs. Bronson. "Puppy love!"

"You can't tell how far it'll go," persisted Mrs. Bonner. "I tell you these schools are getting to be nothing more than sparkin' bees, from the county superintendent down."

"Well, maybe," said Mrs. Bronson, "but I don't see sparkin' in everything boys and girls do as quick as some."

"I wonder," said Mrs. Bonner, "if Colonel Woodruff would be as friendly to Jim Irwin if he knew that everybody says Jennie decided he was to keep his certif'kit because she wants him to get along in the world, so he can marry her?"

"I don't know as she is so very friendly to him," replied Mrs. Bronson; "and Jim and Jennie are both of age, you know."

"Yes, but how about our schools bein' ruined by a love affair?"