Part 15 (2/2)

Scotty's inbred Highland courtesy and the generous desire to help which was part of his nature, impelled him to answer politely. Striving to ignore the violent pantomime being enacted by Dan in the porch, he gave the man the key to the situation. His big finger ran awkwardly down the page as he gave the name by which each pupil was known. The stranger listened in some amus.e.m.e.nt and not a little bewilderment to the list: Roarin' Sandy's Donald, Crooked Duncan's Donald, Peter Archie Red's Donald. They were rather unwieldy, but he planted them down heroically, and then proceeded to disentangle the Murphys and the Tuckers after the same fas.h.i.+on.

”I am very much obliged to you,” he said with the same quiet seriousness when the work was finished, and Scotty took his seat wondering if the new master ever smiled. Most likely that grave, unbending manner was just the natural outcome of his inevitably stuck-up nature, he reflected.

Affairs went harmoniously enough until school was dismissed for the noon recess. As soon as the word was given dinner-pails were seized, bread-and-b.u.t.ter, meat, pie, and cake began to appear and disappear again with equal rapidity; a crowd of the bigger girls made preparations for brewing tea on the stove; and before the new master could get on his overcoat and gloves preparatory to leaving, dinner was well under way, and the room was filled with a strong aroma of tea and pork.

Scotty had gone to the door to administer a farewell s...o...b..ll to the uncla.s.sified aliens who went home to the village for dinner. A prompt answer came hurtling back, and as he dodged into the porch with a derisive yell of laughter, he barely escaped knocking over the new master. He hastily stepped aside to let him pa.s.s, but the man paused.

”I forgot to ask you your own name, among all the others,” he said, more for the sake of engaging the youth in conversation than to gain information. ”You are a MacDonald, too, I believe?”

Scotty had long pa.s.sed the time when he felt his English name a disgrace. Of course he would have preferred one of another sort, but he scarcely thought of it now, and most of his schoolmates had forgotten that he possessed one. And, in the face of this grave man's courtesy, he felt it would be childish to pretend, so he answered, not without some dignity, ”No, my name will not be MacDonald, it will be Stanwell, Ralph Stanwell.”

The new master's grey eyes grew suddenly narrow; he was well acquainted with all the small tricks to be played upon a newcomer, and had many a time seen this one of a fict.i.tious name successfully practiced. He had been prepared to find this boy hard to manage, but he was disgusted that he should descend to such a small, childish prank. He knew Scotty's name only too well, and, in any case, for a youth with a marked Highland accent, dressed in the grey homespun which seemed the uniform of the clan MacDonald, to stand before him and give himself such a name as this was as stupid as it was insulting.

”That is a very clumsy lie,” he remarked quietly.

Scotty dropped his s...o...b..ll and stared; for a moment he did not quite comprehend.

”What?” he cried artlessly. His look of innocent amazement doubled his listener's indignation.

”I said,” returned the man very distinctly, ”that you have told me a lie, and a very stupid one, for I know your name to be Scot MacDonald, and a rather notorious one you have made it, too.”

And turning his back in disgust, the new master walked quietly down the snowy road. For an instant Scotty stood glaring after him, every drop of his rebellious blood tingling. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his s...o...b..ll again and took aim. If he could only smash that conceited looking hat, or better still, the insufferable white collar! But there was something in the commanding air of the figure that went so steadily onward, not deigning to look back, that held the boy's arm.

Instead, he sent the missile cras.h.i.+ng into the last remaining pane in the porch window, and went leaping into the school, determined to find Dan and relieve his feelings by working some irreparable damage.

The schoolhouse was in a condition to invite depredations. Late in the previous autumn, as soon as the news of the new master's expected advent had come, the matrons of Number Nine had organised a housecleaning campaign in the school. Store Thompson's wife, that queen of housekeepers, headed the expedition against dirt, and even the minister's wife took part. The former lady had long declared that the condition of the schoolhouse was clean ridic'l'us, and now demanded that something be done to better it, for as the new master was coming from the Captain's he was sure to be a gentleman, and most like would be terrible tidy.

So the army of housekeepers had charged down upon the schoolhouse, and such a was.h.i.+ng and cleansing and renovating as took place had certainly never been paralleled except when the spring winds and waters came swirling down the Oro hills. The poor little building was scarcely recognisable when it emerged from its baptism of soapy water and whitewash. The big girls added an artistic touch by decorating the spotless walls with cedar boughs, until the place smelled as sweet as the swamps of the Oro; and to crown all, the minister presented it with a fine picture of Queen Victoria to be hung above the master's desk.

And this was the immaculate condition of the place where, when his dinner was finished, Scotty's roving eye sought something upon which to work off his burning indignation.

It had always been the custom heretofore in Number Nine to employ the noon recess tearing round the room in a cloud of dust, yelling, throwing ink and breaking furniture. But to-day the awe of the new master had had a restraining influence, and most of the wilder spirits had betaken themselves to an outdoor campaign. So there were only a few of the smaller pupils and the larger girls grouped round the stove when Scotty started his new enterprise. The cedar wreath above the door was quite dry and rather dusty and offered a fine field for a unique exploit. Lighting a splinter at the stove, he set fire to the garland, allowed the flames to mount up, and just as they threatened to get beyond his control, beat them out with his cap. The girls shrieked in horror; Betty Lauchie screamed that he was a wretch, and the minister himself would be after him, and Biddy Murphy vowed she'd pull every hair of his worthless head out for him if he tried it again. But Scotty was joyously reckless and quite beyond fear of even Miss Murphy.

When Dan returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, who lived over on the Tenth, he found his chum the centre of a wildly excited group, and engaged in beating out his third conflagration. Dan was immediately fired to emulation. He would be disgraced forever in the eyes of the Flats if he allowed Scotty to get ahead of him, and already the room was filling with admiring MacDonalds and envious Murphys. So, in spite of the imploring shrieks and commands of the girls, he struck a match and soon had the festoons along the wall crackling merrily.

When this rival blaze was extinguished Hash Tucker stepped into public notice. Considering his blood and breeding, this son of the house of Tucker should have been a phlegmatic Saxon. But no one can say what Canadian air will do with the blood; and under its influence Hash had long ago commenced a reversion to type, the aboriginal wild Indian.

Whatever Scotty or Dan did therefore, that he could outdo. Seizing a burning brand from the stove, he scrambled up on the teacher's rickety old desk, and the next moment the triumphal arch, reared in honour of the new master's coming, was in a blaze. But just as he reached up to beat out the flames he was gripped violently round the knees, and down he came to the floor, Scotty on the top of him. Hash roared l.u.s.tily for his followers; the Tenth responded gallantly, Scotty was engulfed in their on-rush, and, to help on the good work, Dan Murphy headed a rescue party from the Oa to extricate his friend from the yelling heap.

What the outcome of this affray might have been is doubtful, but just at its inception a terrified cry of ”fire,” from the remainder of the school parted the combatants. They came to their feet to find the flames leaping up the walls, and clouds of smoke rolling through the room.

It was no joke this time and the boys wasted not an instant. Scotty leaped from the floor to head an impromptu fire brigade, and for a few moments they worked desperately. They dragged down the burning branches and flung them out of doors; they flew to and from the pump, they flung snow and water among the flames, and after a short but desperate struggle the fire was conquered.

It was all over in a few moments, and the victors stood, begrimed and breathless, and rather ruefully surveyed the havoc they had unwittingly wrought. The lately spotless walls were scorched and blackened, the decorations depended from the fastenings, charred and ugly, and the floor was swimming in inky water.

”Horo!” cried Scotty, with a long, dismayed whistle.

”It'll be bad for the gent's white collar if he comes in here,” said Dan solemnly. ”Murderin' blazes, who's that?”

Now, it happened that by an evil chance Gabby Johnny, the Secretary-Treasurer, had been driving past the school on his way to the woods, and seeing smoke issuing from the windows of the building over which he considered himself the especial guardian, he stopped his team and rushed upon the scene, and there he stood now, in the silent crowd of frightened girls and sobered boys, gazing at the devastation with such an expression of aghast horror, that at the sight of him all Scotty's compunction vanished and he laughed aloud.

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