Part 27 (1/2)

”All in good time, Clumb,” said he, ”but this is serious work.” So admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under bond, adjourned and dispersed.

”It's a go this time!” said Newton to Jim.

”I think so,” said Jim, ”with those men interested. Well, our study of creameries has given a great deal of language work, a good deal of arithmetic, some geography, and finally saved the people from a swindle.

Rather good work, Raymond!”

”My mother has a delayed luncheon ready for the party,” said Jennie to Jim. ”Please come with us--please!”

But Jim demurred. Getting off at this time of day was really out of the question if he was to be ready to show the real work of the school in the afternoon session.

”This has been rather extraordinary,” said Jim, ”but I am very glad you were here. It shows the utility of the right sort of work in letter-writing, language, geography and arithmetic--in learning things about farming.”

”It certainly does,” said Doctor Brathwayt. ”I wouldn't have missed it under any consideration; but I'm certainly sorry for that creamery shark and his accomplice--to be routed by the Fifth Reader grade in farming!”

The luncheon was rather a wonderful affair--and its success was unqualified after everybody discovered that the majority of those in attendance felt much more at home when calling it dinner. Colonel Woodruff had fought against the regiment of the father of Professor Gray, of Georgia, in at least one engagement, and tentative plans were laid for the meeting of the two old veterans ”some winter in the future.”

”What d'ye think of our school?” asked the colonel.

”Well,” said Professor Gray, ”it's not fair to judge, Colonel, on what must have been rather an extraordinary moment in the school's history. I take it that you don't put on a representation of 'The Knave Unmasked'

every morning.”

”It was more like a caucus than I've ever seen it, daddy,” said Jennie, ”and less like a school.”

”Don't you think,” said Doctor Brathwayt, ”that it was less like a school because it was more like life? It _was_ life. If I am not mistaken, history for this community was making in that schoolroom as we entered.”

”You're perfectly right, Doctor,” said the colonel. ”Columbus Brown and about a dozen others living outside the district are calling Wilbur Smythe in counsel to perfect plans for an election to consolidate a few of these little independent districts, for the express purpose of giving Jim Irwin a plant that he can do something with. Jim's got too big for the district, and so we're going to enlarge the district, and the schoolhouse, and the teaching force, and the means of educational grace generally. That's as sure as can be--after what took place this morning.”

”He's rather a wonderful person, to be found in such a position,” said Professor Gray, ”or would be in any region I have visited.”

”He's a native product,” said the colonel, ”but a wonder all the same.

He's a Brown Mouse, you know.”

”A--a--?” Doctor Brathwayt was plainly astonished. And so the colonel was allowed to tell again the story of the Darbis.h.i.+re brown mice, and why he called Jim Irwin one. Doctor Brathwayt said it was an interesting Mendelian explanation of the appearance of such a character as Jim. ”And if you are right, Colonel, you'll lose him one of these days. You can't expect to retain a Caesar, a Napoleon, or a Lincoln in a rural school, can you?”

”I don't know about that,” said the colonel. ”The great opportunity for such a Brown Mouse may be in this very school, right now. He'd have as big an army right here as Socrates ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only judge of his own proper place.”

”I think,” said Mrs. Brathwayt, as they motored back to the school, ”that your country schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he crushed that Mr.

Carmichael was positively merciless. Did he know how cruel he was?”

”I think not,” said Jennie. ”It was the truth that crushed Mr.

Carmichael.”

”But that vote of thanks,” said Mrs. Brathwayt. ”Surely that was the bitterest irony.”

”I wonder if it was,” said Jennie. ”No, I am sure it wasn't. He wanted to leave the children thinking as well as possible of their victim, and especially of Mr. Bonner; and there was really something in Mr.

Carmichael's talk which could be praised. I have known Jim Irwin since we were both children, and I feel sure that if he had had any idea that his treatment of this man had been unnecessarily cruel, it would have given him a lot of pain.”

”My dear,” said Mrs. Brathwayt, ”I think you are to be congratulated for having known for a long time a genius.”