Part 14 (1/2)

Janey kissed her impulsively. ”Good-by, Carey.”

”Good-by, Janey. Good-by, David.”

”Good-by,” he returned cheerily. Looking back, he saw her lips trembling. His gaze turned in perplexity to Mrs. Winthrop, whose eyes were dancing. ”She expects you to bid her good-by the way Janey did,”

she explained.

”Oh!” said David, reddening, as two baby lips of scarlet were lifted naturally and expectantly to his.

As they drove away, the light feet of the horse making but little sound on the smooth road, Mrs. Winthrop's clear treble was wafted after them.

”One can scarcely believe that his father was a convict and his mother a washerwoman.”

A lump came into the boy's throat. Janey was very quiet on the way home. When they were alone she said to him, with troubled eyes:

”Davey, is Carey going to be your sweetheart?”

His laugh was rea.s.suring.

”Why, Janey, I am just twice her age.”

”She is like a little doll, isn't she, David?”

”No; like a little princess.”

The next morning Little Teacher came to show them her present from Joe.

”I am sure he chose a camera so I could take your pictures to send to him,” she declared.

”Miss Rhody wants her picture taken in the black silk Joe gave her. If you will take it, she won't have to spend the money he sent her,” said the thoughtful David.

Little Teacher was very enthusiastic over this proposition, and offered to accompany him at once to secure the picture. Miss Rhody was greatly excited over the event. Ever since the dress had been finished she had been a devotee at the shrine of two hooks in her closet from which was suspended the long-coveted garment, waiting for an occasion that would warrant its debut. She nervously dressed for the ”likeness,” for which she a.s.sumed her primmest pose. A week later David sent Joe a picture of Miss Rhody standing stiff and straight on her back porch and arrayed, with all the glory of the lilies of the field, in her new silk.

CHAPTER X

When the hot, close-cropped fields took on their first suggestion of autumn and a fuller note was heard in the requiem of the songbirds, when the twilights were of purple and the morning skies delicately mackereled in gray, David entered the little, red, country schoolhouse. M'ri's tutelage and his sedulous application to Jud's schoolbooks saved him from the ignominy of being cla.s.sified with the younger children.

When he sat down to the ink-stained, pen-scratched desk that was to be his own, when he made compact piles of his new books and placed in the little groove in front of the inkwell his pen, pencils, and ruler, he turned to Little Teacher such a glowing face of ecstasy that she was quite inspired, and her sympathies and energies were at once enlisted in the cause of David's education.

It was the beginning of a new world for him. He studied with a concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him, and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon outstripped his cla.s.s, and finally his young instructress was forced to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his library to feed her young furnace.

”He takes to learning as naturally as bees to blossoms,” she reported.

”He must ease off,” warned Barnabas. ”Young hickory needs plenty of room for full growth.”

”No,” disagreed the Judge, ”young hickory is as strong as wrought iron. He's going to have a clear, keen mind to argue law cases.”

”I think not,” said M'ri. ”You forget another quality of young hickory. No other wood burns with such brilliancy. David is going to be an author.”

”I am afraid,” wrote Joe, ”that Dave won't be a first-cla.s.s ranchman.