Tabitha still stood beside the water bucket, quivering in every limb, eyes blazing, nostrils flaring, and clutching the empty dipper fiercely in her hand.
"I will not!"
The teacher was shocked; no one had ever defied her in this manner before, and the angry blood mounted to her forehead. She would have obedience at whatever cost.
"Tabitha, I insist that you beg Jerome"s forgiveness."
"I was to blame some, too, Miss Brooks," interrupted the boy shamefacedly. "I"m sorry."
"I"m not," declared the little rebel, more hurt and grieved at finding her idol shattered than angry at his teasing words.
Plainly Miss Brooks was puzzled. She could not ignore such open defiance; it must be punished in some way. What should she do? A bright thought occurred to her.
"Jerome, take your seat. Tabitha, come here."
The girl walked over to the teacher"s desk, still gripping the dipper in one grimy fist, and wondering what was to befall her now. This was the first time Miss Brooks had ever punished her, and in spite of her anger, sorrowful tears gathered in her eyes. She didn"t mind being hurt, but to have Miss Brooks punish her seemed more than she could bear. The teacher carefully drew her chair out on the platform in front of the whole school, and sitting down in it, took Tabitha on her knee.
"Now, Tabitha, you must sit in my lap until you will tell Jerome that you are sorry. He has begged your pardon like a man, and it is worse than impolite to refuse to do the same to him; it is wicked."
The scholars giggled. Instantly the tears were dried, the brown face grew white and tense, the whole slender body rigid with pa.s.sion, and with unseeing eyes Tabitha stared straight ahead of her, refusing to speak.
Thinking the child would see fit to do as she was told after a few moments of meditation, the teacher rapped for order, took up her book and called the next cla.s.s for geography. But Tabitha"s anger had swallowed up every other emotion, and all that afternoon she sat on Miss Brooks" knee, taking satisfaction in making herself as heavy as possible and in stepping on the teacher"s toes as often as they came within reach.
It was an uncomfortable session for the whole school; Carrie took the punishment as keenly as if she had been the culprit and grieved herself sick over her friend"s unhappiness; and the teacher was almost as sorrowful. The reproachful look in the black eyes haunted her until several times she was on the point of allowing the girl to take her seat, but each time came the thought, "If I let this offense go unpunished, I will soon have the whole school defying me. No, she must obey, even if it is little Tabitha, and Jerome to blame." So she held the furious rebel until the clock pointed to the hour of closing, and then with the cold words, "You may go, now," she dismissed her, half expecting the girl would linger and penitently ask her forgiveness; when she meant to be very firm and make her see the error of her ways, but at last to accept her apology and let the matter drop. To her hurt surprise, however, Tabitha bundled into her wraps and bounced out of the building without waiting even for Carrie, the loyal; and with heavy heart the woman turned back to the little duties which must be attended to before she could go to her home.
The rain had ceased, but little puddles stood in every hollow, and as the schoolhouse was at the foot of the hill, it was almost surrounded by a chain of these miniature lakes. As Tabitha rushed out of the door in her mad flight, she found herself confronted by a huge puddle which she could not cross without wetting her feet, and ever mindful of Aunt Maria"s heroic treatments for colds, she paused to choose a better path.
This gave Carrie a chance to overtake her, but before the little peacemaker could say a word of comfort to the wounded heart, Jerome"s laughing tones rose clearly above the rest of the clamoring voices,
"Oh, Tabitha, wait a minute."
She hesitated, half turned as if to heed his entreaty, and then--then it happened.
"Susie"s reader has a new poem in it; one that I never saw before, Tabitha," the teasing voice continued. "It says:
"My little black Tabby is perched on my knee; As fierce as a lion or tiger is she; She wakes--""
Tabitha"s books fell unheeded to the ground, she leaped toward her tormentor with fury in her heart, and dealt him a staggering blow full on the nose, screaming in rage,
"I would rather be a Tabby Catt than a cross-eyed, red-headed chimpanzee."
Pushing him violently from her, she turned and fled through the wide puddle and up the slope toward home, never hearing the loud splash behind her and the mingled screams and laughter, and not aware that the debonair Jerome with the blood spurting from his nose had lost his balance and toppled into the muddy water.
Indignant Carrie faced him as he rose to his feet, and stamping her foot in her extreme vexation, she boldly cried,
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jerome Vane. Teacher said we mustn"t tease her, and I"m glad you"re hurt. You deserve to be." And she sped tearfully away in pursuit of her fleeing mate before the discomfited boy could find breath to tell her that he was ashamed of himself--thoroughly ashamed.
Miss Brooks had witnessed the fray from the window, but she wasn"t the only grown-up spectator. A tall, dark man loaded down with a huge watermelon had come up the road just in time to hear and see the whole performance, and a smile of satisfaction lit his face when the girl came off victorious.
"Poor kid," he said under his breath. "She is a regular Catt all right.
How will she come out of it?"
He found himself hoping that life might have much more sweetness in it for her than it had had for him. And he had named her Tabitha!
With wild rebellion in her heart and a keen sense of the injustice done her, Tabitha had rushed heedlessly up the hill and down through the pathless tangle of wet greasewood and sagebrush, splashing through mud and water with reckless abandon, and arriving home in a deplorably bespattered state, with feet wet and dress dripping. Aunt Maria saw her coming and met her at the door with an exclamation of horror: "Tabitha Catt! What do you think you are about? The very idea of running through puddles in that manner! Get off those wet shoes this minute and put your feet in the oven. If I just had some mullein leaves now to make compresses with! Look at your dress, and this is the second this week.
Lucky this is Friday or you would have to wear a dirty gown to school tomorrow."
The door opened again and Mr. Catt came in just in time to hear the last words of the scolding. Laying the watermelon on the table, he turned to the child huddled in the corner close to the hot stove, and demanded, "How did you get so muddy?"
"Coming home from school."
"Say "sir" when you address me. What were you doing to get so wet?"
"Running."
"_What?_"
"Running, sir."
"What were you running for?" He was trying to make her confess what had happened at the schoolhouse, but she had her own method of answering questions, and that was seldom very satisfactory to the questioner so far as the amount of information was concerned.
"For exercise," she snapped, forgetting her fear of him in her exasperation at these other unhappy events.
"You were fighting," he said sternly, and she started in surprise, but made no answer. "Weren"t you?"
"No."
"_What?_"
"No, sir."
"Tabitha Catt!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Go to your room. No melon tonight for a girl who will tell such a deliberate lie."
Tabitha rose instantly, seized her draggled belongings and started for her door, but paused on the threshold to say, "I hit him only once. That ain"t fighting, is it? I wanted to trounce him good; he deserved it."
Her door shut with an emphatic bang, and the weary, perplexed, belligerent little girl crept into bed to sob herself to sleep.
Breakfast was over, the dishes all cleared away and the kitchen deserted when she awoke the next morning; but on the table stood a tray on which her lunch was set forth, and beside it lay a note from Aunt Maria saying that a sick neighbor had sent for her and she would be gone for some time.
Tabitha took a survey of the premises. Tom was at the office, the father nowhere in sight. Where was the watermelon? Surely three people couldn"t have eaten all of it in one meal! Oh, there it was in the cooler and not even cut. She stood contemplating it for a moment, then with a deft motion rolled it out on the floor. It was so heavy she could scarcely lift it. She looked around for something to a.s.sist her, and her eye fell upon an empty flour-sack which Aunt Maria had left on top of the barrel, evidently intending to wash it out. Seizing this, she spread it open beside the melon, rolled the great green ball inside, and dragged the trophy out of doors up the rocky path to the road and out of sight among the boulders. There she stood and surveyed the bag while she wrestled with herself.
"He said I lied, and I didn"t. It wasn"t a fight, for Jerome never hit me at all. It takes two to make a fight. Miss Brooks says so. He"s always telling me I lie. He never said I couldn"t have some melon today.
Maybe if I had left it alone he would have given me some. Perhaps I"d better take it back."
She stooped over, grabbed the end of the bag and started back down the trail again, but at the first step she stopped. It was the wrong end of the sack she had clutched, and the melon had rolled out into the sand.
"Oh, gracious! However did that happen?" she exclaimed aloud in horror, gazing with fascinated eyes at the battered, hopelessly scarred ball which had once been so smooth and round and green. Scarcely a bit of the skin remained on its sides, and a great, jagged crack almost split the thing in halves.
"Now, I"ve done it! What will Dad say? Guess I"ll get a licking this time sure. Well, he needn"t have said I lied. Serves him right that his old melon is spoiled. It"s a pity to waste it, though. Guess I better eat it. If I am going to get licked, I may as well have the melon first; maybe it won"t hurt so bad. It looks perfectly beautiful inside."