e girl. "So you went on the war-path to-day?" he said.

She made no answer, but moved toward her mother.

"This youngster," he went on, wheeling around on the teacher, "is well
up in them chart pages and can read pretty good in most books. So I
guess"--he drawled it out sneeringly--"as long as you ain't got any
classes that exactly fit her, she'd better lie fallow for a while."

The little girl shot a proud glance at the Yankton man as she heard the
eldest brother's praise, and, emboldened, spoke up for herself. "I _can_
read all the chart," she declared, "and I can read everyfing in the
First Reader. And I could spell 'man'"--she put the hand that she had
been holding over her ear on a level with her knee--"when I was so
high."

The teacher snorted. "You know your own business," he said to the eldest
brother.

"Guess we do," chimed in the biggest, grinning. "No use bothering her
with a-b, ab, when she can read the things she does." The teacher stood
up, ready to go. "And I was about to remark," continued the biggest,
banteringly, "that she's got a lot of mighty nice stories that she's
read and done with; and if you'd like to borrow one, once in a while, to
pass an evenin' with, you'd find 'em mighty educatin'."

"Thank you," answered the teacher; "but like as not you'll need 'em all
to finish up _her_ eddication on. I guess maybe you'll be sending her to
Sioux Falls in a year or so to kind o' polish her off."

The sarcasm in the voice stung the biggest brother. "Well," he said,
"she could polish off right here on these plains and have a lot more in
her noddle in a year or two than _some_ people I know."

This boast of her favorite again brought the little girl's courage up.
"I don't want to go to a city school," she declared, "'cause they don't
wear caps there."

The teacher was tramping out, with no backward look or good-by word, and
he did not wait to hear more. So it was the eldest brother who answered
her. "If you don't go here and you don't go to Sioux Falls," he said,
"I'd like to know where you'll learn anything. Ma ain't got no time to
be your governess."

"I don't want no governess, either," she replied. "I know what I'm going
to do." She brought forward the magazine, which she had been holding
behind her back with one hand, and, opening it at the drawing of the
young woman in cap and gown, laid it on the biggest brother's knee. Then
she went up to her mother, her face fairly shining through the dus