Cy Whittaker's Place Part 18

The little woman's manner changed. Her gray eyes flashed indignantly.

"You dozed off?" she repeated. "With a little girl in your charge, and in the very next lot to that cow? Didn't you know the creature chased women and girls?"

"Why, yes; I'd heard of it, but--"

"It wasn't Uncle Cyrus's fault," put in Bos'n eagerly. "It was mine. I went away by myself."

Beyond s.h.i.+fting her gaze to the child the lady paid no attention to this remark.

"What do you think her mother 'll say when she sees that dress?" she asked.

It was Emily's best gown, the finest of the new "rig out" prepared by Miss Taylor. The girl and Captain Cy gazed ruefully at the rents and pitch stains made by the vines and pine trees.

"Well, you see," replied the abashed captain, "the fact is, she ain't got any mother."

"Oh! I beg your pardon. And hers, too, poor dear. Well, if I were you I shouldn't go to sleep next time I took her walking. Good afternoon."

She turned and calmly walked down the path. At the bend she spoke again.

"I should be gentle with her, if I were you," she said. "Her nerves are pretty well upset. Besides, if you'll excuse my saying so, I don't think she is the one that needs scolding."

They thought she had gone, but she turned once more to add a final suggestion.

"I think that dress could be fixed," she said, "if you took it to some one who knew about such things."

She disappeared amidst the graveyard shrubbery. Captain Cy and Bos'n slowly followed her. From the pasture the red and white cow sent after them a broken-spirited "Moo!"

Bos'n was highly indignant. During the homeward walk she sputtered like a damp firecracker.

"The idea of her talking so to you, Uncle Cyrus!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't your fault at all."

The captain smiled one-sidedly.

"I don't know about that, s.h.i.+pmate," he said. "I wouldn't wonder if she was more than half right. But say! she was all business and no frills, wasn't she! Ha, ha! How she did s.p.u.n.k up to that heifer! Who in the d.i.c.kens do you cal'late she is?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE "COW LADY"

That question was answered the very next day. Bos'n, carefully dressed by Georgianna under the captain's supervision, and weighted down with advice and counsel from the latter, started for the schoolhouse at a quarter to nine. Only a sense of shame kept Captain Cy from walking to school with her. He spent a miserable forenoon. They were quite the longest three hours in his varied experience. The house was dreadfully lonely. He wandered from kitchen to sitting room, worried Georgianna, woke up the cat, and made a complete nuisance of himself. Twelve o'clock found him leaning over the gate and looking eagerly in the direction of the schoolhouse.

Bos'n ran all the way home. She was in a high state of excitement.

"What do you think, Uncle Cyrus?" she cried. "What DO you think? I've found out who the cow lady is!"

"The cow lady? Oh, yes, yes! Have you? Who is she?"

"She's teacher, that's who she is!"

The captain was astonished.

"No!" he exclaimed. "Phoebe Dawes? You don't say so! Well, well!"

"Yes, sir. When I went into school and found her sitting there I was so surprised I didn't know what to do. She knew me, too, and said good morning, and was I all right again and was my dress really as bad as it looked to be? I told her that Georgianna thought she could fix it, and if she couldn't, her sister could. She said that was nice, and then 'twas time for school to begin."

"Did she say anything about me?" inquired Captain Cy when they were seated at the dinner table.

"Oh, yes! I forgot. She must have found out who you are, 'cause she said she was surprised that a man who had made his money out of hides should have been so careless about the creatures that wore 'em."

"Humph! How'd she get along with the young ones in school?"

It appeared that she had gotten along very well with them. Some of the bigger boys in the back seats, cheris.h.i.+ng pleasant memories of the "fun"

they had under Miss Seabury's easy-going rule, attempted to repeat their performances of the previous term. But the very first "spitball" which spattered upon the blackboard proved a disastrous missile for its thrower.

"She made him clean the board," proclaimed Bos'n, big-eyed and awestruck, "and then he had to stand in the corner. He was Bennie Edwards, and he's most thirteen. Miss Seabury, they said, couldn't do anything with him, but teacher said 'Go,' as quiet as could be and just looked at him, and he went. And he's most as tall as she is. He did look so silly!"

The Edwards youth was not the only one who was made to "look silly"

by little Miss Dawes during the first days of her stay in Bayport. She dealt with the unruly members of her cla.s.ses as bravely as she had faced the Cahoon cow, and the results were just as satisfactory. She was strict, but she was impartial, and Alicia Atkins found, to her great surprise, that the daughter of a congressman was expected to study as faithfully and behave herself as well as freckled-faced Noah Hamlin, whose father peddled fish and whose everyday costume was a checkered "jumper" and patched overalls.

The school committee, that is, the majority of it, was delighted with the new teacher. Lemuel Myrick boasted loudly of his good judgment in voting for her. But Tad Simpson and Darius Ellis and others of the Atkins following still scoffed and hinted at trouble in the future.

"A new broom sweeps fine," quoted Mr. Simpson. "She's doin' all right now, maybe. Anyway, the young ones are behavin' themselves, but disCIPline ain't the whole thing. Heman told me that the teacher he wanted could talk French language and play music and all kinds of accomplishments. Phoebe--not findin' any fault with her, you understand--don't know no more about music than a hen; my wife says she don't even sing in church loud enough for anybody to hear her. And as for French! why everybody knows she uses the commonest sort of United States, just as easy to understand as what I'm sayin' now."

Miss Dawes boarded at the perfect boarding house. There opinion was divided concerning her. Bailey and Mr. Tidditt liked her, but the feminine boarders were not so favorably impressed.

"I think she's altogether too pert about what don't concern her,"

commented Angeline Phinney. "Sarah Emma Simpson dropped in t'other day to dinner, and we church folks got to talkin' about the minister's preachin' such 'advanced' sermons. And Sarah Emma told how she'd heard he said he'd known some real moral Universalists in his time, or some such unreligious foolishness. And I said I wondered he didn't get a new tail coat; the one he preached in Sundays was old as the hills and so outgrown it wouldn't scurcely b.u.t.ton acrost him. 'A man bein' paid nine hundred a year,' I says, 'ought to dress decent, anyhow.' And that Phoebe Dawes speaks up, without bein' asked, and says for her part she'd ruther hear a broad man in a narrer coat than t'other way about. 'Twas a regular slap in the face for me, and Sarah Emma and I ain't got over it yet."

Captain Cy heard the gossip concerning the new teacher and it rather pleased him. She appeared to be independent, and he liked independence.

He met her once or twice on the street, but she merely bowed and pa.s.sed on. Once he tried to thank her again for her part in the cow episode, but she would not listen to him.

Bos'n was making good progress with her studies. She was naturally a bright child--not the marvel the captain and the "Board of Strategy"

considered her, but quick to learn. She was not a saint, however, and occasionally misbehaved in school and was punished for it. One afternoon she did not return at her usual hour. Captain Cy was waiting at the gate when Asaph Tidditt happened along. Bailey, too, was with him.

"Waitin' for Bos'n, was you?" asked the town clerk. "Well, you'll have to wait quite a spell, I cal'late. She's been kept after school."

"Yes; and she's got to write fifty lines of copy," added Bailey.

Captain Cy was highly indignant.

"Get out!" he cried. "She ain't neither."

"Yes, she has, too. One of the Salters young ones told me. I knew you'd be mad, though I s'pose folks that didn't know her's well's we do would say she's no different from other children."

This was close to heresy, according to the captain's opinion.