he teacher. The teacher lived in the
Irishman's shack, which was made of cottonwood logs laid one upon
another and covered with a roof of sticks and dirt, and "bached" by
himself through the term, because the little girl's mother had refused
to board him. So, when the eldest brother had finished his visit and
rowed back, he recited such an ill-natured version of that day's
happenings at the school-house, that the family, until then divided by
the contradictory stories of the youngest brother and the little girl,
united in heaping reproaches upon her.

Next morning she again traveled the winding path that skirted the
marsh-grass and bulrushes, this time on the pinto. Luffree, who had been
tied up at breakfast, but had mysteriously slipped his collar, followed,
as before. When she arrived within a short distance of the school-house,
she climbed down and, without taking any notice of the giggling, waiting
crowd by the door, carefully picketed the mare out of reach of the other
ponies. Then she pulled off the bridle, put it beside the picket-pin,
and, after bidding Luffree watch beside it, went in quietly to take her
seat. She had not unblanketed her horse because, underneath the soft
sheepskin saddle and well out of sight, was tucked one of her mother's
latest magazines that had pictures scattered through it.

When school was called, she was not allowed to keep the seat on the
rostrum. One of the Dutchman's seven being absent, she was told to share
the rear bench with the neighbor woman's daughter, and spent a happy
hour in the seclusion of the high seat, watching "Frenchy," who had no
slate, write his spelling on the smooth, round stove, and smiling at the
Swede boy when he looked slyly across at her.

Then she heard some one call her name. It was the teacher. "Come forward
to the chart," he said, and his voice seemed to shake the very floor.

She took up her Second Reader, edged herself off her seat, and stood
beside it, her eyes fixed questioningly upon him.

"Come forward to the chart, I say," he said again. "Can't you hear!"

"Yes," answered the little girl, starting up the room. But she walked so
slowly that, when she came near his table, he put out one lean hand,
grabbed her by the arm, and hurried her. She resented his touch by
twisting about until she was free. Then she took her place in front of
the chart, feeling as if every eye in the room were looking up and down
the row of blue crockery buttons on the ba