of a flock of innocent pigeons going over the heads of some lazy
boys. In the first place, Susan Lanham talked about things. She talked
to her aunts, and she talked to her uncles, and, above all, she talked
to her father. Now Susan was the brightest girl in the town, and she had
a tongue, as all the world knew, and when she set out to tell people
what a brute the old master was, how he had beaten two innocent boys,
how bravely Jack had carried himself, how frightened little Columbus
was, and how sick it had made him, and how mean the boys were to put
the powder there, and then to let the others take the whipping,--I say,
when Susan set out to tell all these things, in her eloquent way, to
everybody she knew, you might expect a waking up in the sleepy old town.
Some of the people took Susan's side and removed their children from the
school, lest they, too, should get a whipping and run home and have
brain fever. But many stood up for the old master, mostly because they
were people of the sort that never can bear to see anything changed.
"The boys ought to have told who put the powder in the stove," they
said. "It served them right."

"How could the master know that Jack and Columbus did not do it
themselves?" said others. "Maybe they did!"

"Don't tell me!" cried old Mrs. Horne. "Don't tell me! Boys can't be
managed without whipping, and plenty of it. 'Bring up a child and away
he goes,' as the Bible says. When you hire a master, you want a
_master_, says I."

"What a tongue that Sue Lanham has got!" said Mr. Higbie, Mr. Ball's
brother-in-law.

The excitement spread over the whole village. Doctor Lanham talked about
it, and the ministers, and the lawyers, and the loafers in the stores,
and the people who came to the post-office for their letters. Of course,
it broke out furiously in the "Maternal Association," a meeting of
mothers held at the house of one of the ministers.

"Mr. Ball can do every sum in the arithmetic," urged Mrs. Weathervane.

"He's a master hand at figures, they do say," said Mother Brownson.

"Yes," said Mrs. Dudley, "I don't doubt it. Jack's back is covered with
figures of Mr. Ball's making. For my part, I should rather have a
master that did his figuring on a slate."

Susan Lanham got hold of this retort, and took pains that it should be
known all over the village.

When Greenbank once gets waked up on any question, it never goes to
sleep until that particular question is settled. But it