Part 15 (1/2)

”It won't bother you to take care of it,” said he, ”but if you're not too extravagant it will pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars over.”

Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium was paid to the person receiving the honor, then. What a relief!

”All right,” he exclaimed. ”I'll be glad to come!”

”Let's consider that settled,” said the professor. ”And now I must be going back to the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes next. I tell you, the winter wheat crop has been--”

But Jim was not able to think much of the winter wheat problem as they went back to the auditorium. He was worth putting on the program at a state meeting! He was worth the appreciation of a college professor, trained to think on the very matters Jim had been so long mulling over in isolation and blindness! He was actually worth paying for his thoughts.

Calista Simms thought she saw something s.h.i.+ning and saint-like about the homely face of her teacher as he came to her at her post in the room in which the school exhibit was held. Calista was in charge of the little children whose work was to be demonstrated that day, and was in a state of exaltation to which her starved being had hitherto been a stranger.

Perhaps there was something similar in her condition of fervent happiness to that of Jim. She, too, was doing something outside the sordid life of the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have been glad to die for them--and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of the town girls who pa.s.sed about among the exhibits, she was poorly dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of wellbeing and happiness in Calista's soul at the feeling of her whole clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the ”boughten” cloak she wore--and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have understood Calista's joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson's eyes were on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the pa.s.sions quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.

”h.e.l.lo, Calista!” said Jim. ”How are you enjoying it?”

”Oh!” said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. ”Ah'm enjoying myse'f right much, Mr. Jim.”

”Any of the home folks coming in to see?”

”Yes, seh,” answered Calista. ”All the school board have stopped by this morning.”

Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie Woodruff. When Sim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended hand, he felt the repulsion of their att.i.tudes and sheered off on some pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.

They resumed their talk.

”I'm a Dimocrat,” said Con Bonner, ”and you fellers is Republicans, and we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party lines.”

”The fight about the teacher,” said Haakon Peterson, ”is a t'ing of the past. All our candidates got odder yobs now.”

”Yes,” said Ezra Bronson. ”Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she could get it”

”And as I was sayin',” went on Bonner, ”I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin.

An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I got for him.” ”You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can,” said Peterson. ”I tank you better run.”

”What say, Ez?” asked Bonner.

”Suits me all right,” said Bronson. ”I guess we three have had our fight out and understand each other.”

”All right,” returned Bonner, ”I'll take the office again. Let's not start too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?”

”Suits me,” said Bronson.

”Wery well,” said Peterson.

”I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts,” said Bonner. ”He rounded up that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?”

”I tank not,” replied Peterson. ”I tank he was yust interested in how Yennie managed it.”

”Looked mighty like he was managin' the demonstration,” said Bonner. ”What d'ye think, Ez?”

”Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with,” said Bronson. ”I reckon he was just interested in Jennie's dilemmer. It ain't reasonable that Colonel Woodruff after the p'litical career he's had would mix up in school district politics.”