and encouraged her, and Howard
Crompton stood at a distance laughing at her.

CHAPTER VII

RUBY ANN PATRICK

She had taught the school in District No. 5 summer and winter for five
years. She had been a teacher for fifteen years, her first experience
dating back to the days when the Colonel was school inspector, and his
formula in full swing. She had met all his requirements promptly, knew
all about the geese and the grindstone, and the wind, and Mr. Wright,
and had a certificate in the Colonel's handwriting, declaring her to be
rooted and grounded in the fundamentals, and qualified to teach a
district school anywhere. As Mr. Bills had said to Eloise, she was five
feet nine inches high and large in proportion, with so much strength and
vital force and determination, that the most unruly boy in District No.
5 would hesitate before openly defying her authority. She had conquered
Tom Walker, the bully of the school, and after the day when he was made
to feel the force there was in her large hand, he had done nothing worse
than make faces behind her back and draw caricatures of her on his
slate.

As a rule, Ruby Ann was popular with the majority of the people, and
there had been some opposition to a change. It was hardly fair, they
said to the Colonel, who took so much interest in the school, and who
was sure to feel angry and hurt if deprived of the privilege of
catechising the teachers in the office he had erected for that purpose
on his grounds. He had not only built the school-house, but had kept it
in repair, and had added a classroom for the older scholars because
somebody said it was needed, and had not objected when it was only used
for wraps and dinner pails, and balls and clubs in the summer, and in
the winter for coal and wood and sleds and skates and other things
pertaining to a school of wide-awake girls and boys.

This was the conservative party, but there was another which wanted a
change. They had been in a rut long enough, and they laughed at the
Colonel's formula, which nearly every child knew by heart. The Colonel
was too old to run things,--they must have something up to date, and
when the president of Mayville Normal School applied for a situation for
Eloise she was accepted, and Ruby Ann went to the wall. She was greatly
chagrined and disappointed when she found herself supplanted by a normal
graduate, of whom she had not a much higher opinion than the Colonel
himself. When she heard of t