"I"m discharged, of course," I remarked, after a moment"s silence.
"Oh, maybe not," said Justice soothingly, as we reached home, and he turned off to go to his cabin.
"I don"t care if I am," I cried savagely. "I hate that old Board so I wouldn"t work for them another day." And I stalked into the house with my head in the air.
But somehow, after I had eaten my supper and begun to write this letter, I began to feel differently. The way the girls stood up for me this afternoon changed my whole att.i.tude toward school teaching. To find out that they actually loved me was the biggest surprise I had ever had in my life. I had hated them so thoroughly along with the school teaching that it had never occurred to me that they did not feel the same way toward me. I suddenly hated myself for my impatience with their stupidity. Of course they were stupid--how could they be otherwise, poor, pitiful, ill-clad, overworked creatures, coming from such homes as they did? I stopped despising them and was filled only with pity for the narrow, colorless lives they led. That afternoon when they had told me, shyly and wistfully, how much they enjoyed my teaching, I was filled with guilty pangs, because I knew just how much _I_ had enjoyed it. That impromptu picnic had quite won their hearts and broken down the barriers between us, and the trouble it had gotten me into crystallized their affection into expression. Now the ice was broken, and I would be able to get more out of them than ever before. The prospect of teaching began to have compensations.
Then suddenly I remembered. I would be discharged after the next meeting of the Board. I would have no opportunity of getting better acquainted with my pupils and leading them in the pleasant paths of knowledge. Just when the drink began to taste sweet I had to go and upset the cup!
And your Katherine, who had hated teaching the poor whites so fiercely all these months, buried her head on her arms and cried bitterly at the thought of having to give it up!
Yours, in tears, Katherine.
HINPOHA TO KATHERINE
Brownell College, Nov. 25, 19--.
Dearest Katherine:
At first glance I don"t suppose you will recognize this sweet little creature, but you ought to, seeing you are his own mother. It"s the Pig you drew with your eyes shut in Glady"s PIG BOOK last year. Gladys brought the PIG BOOK along with her and the other day we got it out and found your poor little Piggy with the mournful inscription under him, "Where is My Wandering Pig To-night?" He looked so sad and lonesome we knew he was simply pining away for you. His ink has faded perceptibly and he is just a shadow of his former emphatic self. Migwan looked at it and said, "What charade does it make you think of?"
It was just as plain as the nose on your face, and we all shouted at once, "Pork-you-pine!"
We couldn"t bear to leave him there to die of grief and longing, so we transferred him tenderly to this letter and are sending him to his mumsey by Special Delivery. We hope he will pick up immediately upon arrival.
We had Lamb"s _Dissertation on Roast Pig_ in Literature the other day and were asked to comment upon it, and Agony wrote that she didn"t think much of a dissertation on Pig that was written by a Lamb; she thought Bacon could have handled the subject much better!
As ever, your Hinpoha.
P. S. Here is Piggy"s tail; we found it in a corner of the page after we had him transferred.
KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS
Dec. 3, 19--.
Dear Winnies:
Hurray! I"m not fired. Why, I wasn"t I never will be able to figure out, but it"s so. A week after the Picnic the Board sat, but not on me. For a while I lived in hourly expectation of forcible eviction, but nothing happened, and I heard from Justice, who stands high in the favor of Elijah b.u.t.ts and gets inside information about school matters, that nothing was going to be done about it. If Justice had any further details he wouldn"t divulge them.
Justice is a queer chap. Although he talks nonsense incessantly, you can get very little information out of him. And the way he puts up with all kinds of inconveniences without complaint is wonderful to me. He must be accustomed to far different surroundings, and yet from his att.i.tude you"d think his little cabin out beyond the stables was the one place on earth he"d select for an abode. He never even mentioned the fact that the roof leaked badly until I went out there to fetch him and discovered him on top patching it. Then I went inside to see what else could be improved, and the bare, tumble-down-ness of the place struck me forcibly. Light shone through c.h.i.n.ks in the walls, the door sill was warped one way and the door another, and there was no sign of the pane that had once been in the window. It was simply a dilapidated cabin, and made no pretence of being anything else. How he could live in it was more than I could see.
No light at night but a kerosene lamp, no furniture except what he himself had made from boards, boxes and logs; no carpet on the rough, rotting floor. Why did he choose to live in this cell when he might have taken rooms with any of the school board members over in Spencer?
It was on this occasion that I saw the rough board table under the one window, strewn with pencils, compa.s.ses and sheets of paper covered with strange lines and figures.
"What"s this?" I asked curiously.
"Nothing, that amounts to anything," replied Justice, with a queer, dry little laugh. "Once I was fool enough to believe that it did amount to something." He swept the papers together and threw them face downward on the table.
"Tell me about it," I said coaxingly, scenting a secret, possibly a clue to his past.
Justice stared out of the open door for a few moments, his shoulders slumped into a discouraged curve, his face moody and resentful. Then suddenly he threw back his head and squared his shoulders. "It"s nothing," he said shortly. "Only, once I thought I had a brilliant idea, and tried to patent it. Then I found out I wasn"t as smart as I thought I was, that"s all."
"What did you invent?" I asked.
"Oh, just an old electrical device--you probably wouldn"t understand the workings of it--to be used in connection with wireless apparatus. It was a thing for recording vibrations and by its use a deaf man could receive wireless messages. I worked four years perfecting it and then thought my fortune was made. But n.o.body would back me on it. They all laughed at the thing. I got so disgusted one day that I threw the thing into the sad sea. Four years" work went up at one splash! That was the end of my career as an inventor."
Poor Justice! I sympathized with him so hard that I hardly knew what to say. I knew what that failure must have meant to his proud, sensitive soul. The first failure is always such a blow. It takes considerable experience in failing to be able to do it gracefully. I could see that he didn"t want any voluble sympathy from me and that it was such a sore subject that he"d rather not talk about it. I didn"t know what to say.
Then my eye fell on the sheets on the table. "What are you inventing now?" I asked, to break the silence that was growing awkward.
"Just working on bits of things," he replied, "to pa.s.s the time away. You can"t experiment with wireless now, you know."
The confidences Justice had made to me almost drove my errand out of my head. It was rather breathless, this having a new side of him turn up every little while. I returned to my original quest for information.
"I came for expert advice," I remarked.
Justice looked up inquiringly. "Shoot," he said.
"Do you suppose," I inquired in a perplexed tone, "that they"d enjoy it just as much if the costumes have to be imaginary?"
Justice"s face suddenly became contorted. "They"d probably enjoy wearing, ah--er imaginary costumes if the weather is warm enough," he replied, carefully avoiding my eye.
"Justice Sherman!" I exploded, laughing in spite of myself. "You know very well what I mean. I mean can we have a Ceremonial Meeting in blue calico and imagine it"s Ceremonial costumes?"
Justice scratched his head. "It depends upon how much imagination "we"
have," he remarked. "Now, for instance, I know someone not a hundred miles from here who can imagine herself in her college room when it"s only make believe, and can do wonderful work in French and mathematics.
She----"
"That"s enough from you," I interrupted. "The matter is settled. We"ll have a Ceremonial Meeting. We"ll pretend we"ve gone traveling and have left our Ceremonial dresses at home. We"re a war-time group, anyhow, and ought to do without things."
There now! The secret is out! Your poor stick of a Katherine is a real Camp Fire Guardian. I wasn"t going to tell you at first, but I"m afraid I will have to come to you for advice very often. I have organized my girls into a group and they are entering upon the time of their young lives.
Make the hand sign of fire when you meet us, and greet us with the countersign, for we be of the same kindred. Magic spell of Wohelo! By its power even the poor spirited Hard-uppers have become sisters of the incomparable Winnebagos. Wo-He-Lo for aye! We are the tribe of Wenonah, the Eldest Daughter, and our tepee is the schoolhouse.
Of course, as Camp Fire Groups go, we are a very poor sister. We haven"t any costumes, any headbands, any honor beads, or any Camp Fire adornments of any kind. I advanced the money to pay the dues, and that was all I could afford. There are so few ways of making money here and most of the families are so poor that I"m afraid we"ll never have much to do with.
But the girls are so taken up with the idea of Camp Fire that it"s a joy to see them. In all their shiftless, drudging lives it had never once occurred to them that there was any fun to be gotten out of work. It"s like opening up a new world to them. Do you know, I"ve discovered why they never did the homework I used to give to them. It"s because they never had any time at home. There were always so many ch.o.r.es to do. Their people begrudged them the time that they had to be in school and wouldn"t hear of any additional time being taken for lessons afterward.
As soon as I heard that I changed the lessons around so they could do all their studying in school. Besides that, I looked some of the schoolbooks in the face and decided that they were hopelessly behind the times, Elijah b.u.t.ts to the contrary. They were the same books that had been used in this section for twenty-five years.
"What is the use," I said aloud to the spider weaving a web across my desk, "of teaching people antiquated geography and cheap, incorrect editions of history when the thing they need most is to learn how to cook and sew and wash and iron so as to make their homes livable? Why should they waste their precious time reading about things that happened a thousand years ago when they might be taking an active part in the stirring history that is being made every day in these times? Blind, stubborn, moth-eaten old fogies!" I exclaimed, shaking my fist in the direction of Spencer, where the Board sat.
Right then and there I sc.r.a.pped the time-honored curriculum and made out a truly Winnebago one. It kept the fundamentals, but in addition it included cooking, sewing, table setting, bed making, camp cookery, singing of popular songs, folk dancing, hiking and stunts. Yes sir, stunts! I teach them stunts as carefully as I teach them spelling and arithmetic. Can you imagine anyone who has never done a stunt in all their lives?
We rigged up a cook stove inside the schoolhouse--if you"d ever see it!