ed themselves up
alert and expectant in their seats.

"School, eh?" Tom observed, turning as Mary Hope pushed the door shut
against the wind that rattled the small shack and came toward him
shivering and pulling her sweater collar closer about her neck. "When
did this happen?"

"When I started teaching here, Mr. Lorrigan." Then, mindful of her
manners, she tempered the pertness with a smile. "And that was
yesterday. Will you sit down?"

"No, thanks--I just stopped to see who was livin' here, and--" He
broke off to look up at the dirt roof. A clod the size of his fist had
been loosened by the shaking of the wind, and plumped down in the
middle of the teacher's desk. With the edge of his palm he swept clod
and surrounding small particles of dirt into his hat crown, and
carried them to the door.

"There's an empty calf shed over at the ranch that would make a better
schoolhouse than this," he observed. "It's got a shingle roof."

Mary Hope was picking small lumps of dirt out of her hair, which she
wore in a pompadour that disclosed a very nice forehead. "I just love
a roof with shingles on it," she smiled.

"H'm." Tom looked up at the sagging poles with the caked mud showing
in the cracks between where the poles had shrunken and warped under
the weight. A fresh gust of wind rattled dust into his eyes, and the
oldest Swede chortled an abrupt "Ka-hugh!" that set the other six
tittering.

"Silence! _Shame_ on you!" Mary Hope reproved them sternly, rapping on
the kitchen table with a foot rule of some soft wood that blazoned
along its length the name of a Pocatello hardware store. "Get to work
this instant or I shall be compelled to keep you all in at recess."

"You better haze 'em all home at recess, and get where it's warm
before you catch your death of cold," Tom advised, giving first aid to
his eye with a corner of his white-dotted blue handkerchief. "This
ain't fit for cattle, such a day as this."

"A north wind like this would blow through anything," Mary Hope
loyally defended the shack. "It was quite comfortable yesterday."

"I wouldn't send a dog here to school," said Tom. "Can't they dig up
any better place than this for you to teach in?"

"The parents of these children are paying out of their own pockets to
have them taught, as it is."

"They'll be paying out of their own pockets to have them planted, if
they ain't careful," Tom predicted dryly. "How're you fixed for
firewood? Got enough to keep warm