Part 8 (1/2)
”Culture!” exclaimed Jim. ”Why--why, after ten years of the sort of school I would give you if I were a better teacher, and could have my way, the people of the cities would be begging to have their children admitted so that they might obtain real culture--culture fitting them for life in the twentieth century--”
”Don't bother to get ready for the city children, Jim,” said Mrs. Bonner sneeringly, ”you won't be teaching the Woodruff school that long.”
All this time, the dark-faced Cracker had been glooming from a corner, earnestly seeking to fathom the wrongness he sensed in the gathering. Now he came forward.
”I reckon I may be making a mistake to say anything,” said he, ”f'r we-all is strangers hyeh, an' we're pore; but I must speak out for Mr. Jim--I must! Don't turn him out, folks, f'r he's done mo' f'r us than eveh any one done in the world!”
”What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Peterson.
”I mean,” said Raymond, ”that when Mr. Jim began talking school to us, we was a pore no-'count lot without any learnin', with nothin' to talk about except our wrongs, an' our enemies, and the meanness of the Iowa folks.
You see we didn't understand you-all. An' now, we have hope. We done got hope from this school. We're goin' to make good in the world. We're getting education. We're all learnin' to use books. My little sister will be as good as anybody, if you'll just let Mr. Jim alone in this school--as good as any one. An' I'll he'p pap get a farm, and we'll work and think at the same time, an' be happy!”
CHAPTER IX
JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY
The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken off into the ap.r.o.n of Miss Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as the very smallest and least bloomy of all the plums on the tree; but there is something which tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having received the votes of the people for any office, especially in a region of high average civilization, covering six hundred or seven hundred square miles of good American domain. Jennie was a sensible country girl. Being sensible, she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel some little sense of increased importance as she drove her father's little one-cylinder runabout over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December weather, just before Christmas.
The weather itself was stimulating, and she was making rapid progress in the management of the little car which her father had offered to lend her for use in visiting the one hundred or more rural schools soon to come under her supervision. She rather fancied the picture of herself, clothed in more or less authority and queening it over her little army of teachers.
Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically conscious that she made rather an agreeable picture, as she stopped her car alongside his top buggy to talk with him. She had bright blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled at him ingratiatingly.
”Don't you think father is lovely?” said she. ”He is going to let me use the runabout when I visit the schools.”
”That will be good,” said Haakon. ”It will save you lots of time. I hope you make the county pay for the gasoline.”
”I haven't thought about that,” said Jennie. ”Everybody's been so nice to me--I want to give as well as receive.”
”Why,” said Haakon, ”you will yust begin to receive when your salary begins in Yanuary.”
”Oh, no!” said Jennie. ”I've received much more than that now! You don't know how proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew before, and all my old friends like you working for me in the convention and at the polls, just as if I amounted to something.”
”And you don't know how proud I feel,” said Haakon, ”to have in county office a little girl I used to hold on my lap.”
In early times, when Haakon was a flat-capped immigrant boy, he had earned the initial payment on his first eighty acres of prairie land as a hired man on Colonel Woodruff's farm. Now he was a rather richer man than the colonel, and not a little proud of his ascent to affluence. He was a mild-spoken, soft-voiced Scandinavian, quite completely Americanized, and possessed of that apt.i.tude for local politics which makes so good a citizen of the Norwegian and Swede. His influence was always worth fifty to sixty Scandinavian votes in any county election. He was a good party man and conscious of being ent.i.tled to his voice in party matters. This seemed to him an opportunity for exerting a bit of political influence.
”Yennie,” said he, ”this man Yim Irwin needs to be lined up.”
”Lined up! What do you mean?”
”The way he is doing in the school,” said Haakon, ”is all wrong. If you can't line him up, he will make you trouble. We must look ahead. Everybody has his friends, and Yim Irwin has his friends. If you have trouble with him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up and have him do right.”
”But he is so funny,” said Jennie.
”He likes you,” said Haakon. ”You can line him up.”
Jennie blushed, and to conceal her slight embarra.s.sment, got out for the purpose of cranking her machine.