Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 20

"How about horse-back riding?" I suggested. "Jo's old Bess is just like a comfortable rocker."

"The very thing!" exclaimed Father. "Let her ride around the yard for a few days until she gains confidence, and then she can go on a regular ride. Go to Milton for the mail and even come over here after a little."

"Must we still keep up the pink medicine?" asked Jo.

"Oh, well! Give it to her in emergencies, but not too freely."

Jo had a twinkle in his eye. He knew that the pink medicine was made of perfectly good pump water with a little colouring matter and enough bromide to quiet the nerves of an oyster.

"This Christmas has done something for Sally if for no one else," said Father. "It has taught her that she can go heels over head in the snow without affecting her heart; that she can eat as good a dinner as the next without feeling bad; and that she can coast down a hill without turning a hair."

I looked at Sally settling herself on a chair back that Wink had kindly pulled up the hill for her. Sticking out her fat, woolly, grey legs on each side, she took the hill in great shape. I hoped she was cured of her imaginary ailments and would let my dear Father get many a good night's rest by not sending for him every time she felt her heart beat.

CHAPTER XIX.

BACK IN THE TREAD-MILL.

That is the way we looked on going back to school. It was not really a tread-mill, nothing nearly so dreadful, but we considered ourselves very much put upon that the holidays could not last forever, that books had to be studied, and rules either obeyed or punishments meted out if they were broken.

We had gone home knowing that demerits were going to have to be worked off after the holidays, but as I have said before, it had had no more effect on our spirits than a threat of h.e.l.l fire would have on a new-born babe. But babies must grow up and time will pa.s.s and holidays come to an end, and here we were paying up for our foolishness on our last night at school before Christmas.

Almost all the Junior cla.s.s was in bad, and misery loves company, so we lightened our labours all we could with sly jests and notes written to each other instead of the pages of dictionary we were supposed to be copying.

Of all punishments, copying dictionary seems to me to be the most futile. It was disagreeable enough, but of course punishments should be that, but it was not only disagreeable but such a terrible waste of time. I did not mind learning hymns, especially if I already knew them, but the pages of dictionary almost persuaded me to behave myself,--not quite, though.

"When we get out of this, let's be either very good or very careful,"

said Dum, as we finished up our first day in durance vile while the rest of the school, all the good girls, had gone for a nice walk in the woods. "I am liable to do something desperate if I get in bad again."

"I am going to try," declared Mary, very penitent after having to memorize a very long and very lugubrious hymn. "It may not pay to be good, but you've certainly got to pay to be bad."

All of us tried to be good. We studied like Trojans (not that Trojans ever did study as far as I know). I learned my history by heart and actually won a smile of approval from Miss Plympton. I knuckled down to geometry and if the figure was drawn exactly as it was in the book and the same letters were used to designate the angles, I got on swimmingly.

A slight change of letter upset me considerably, however. I never could understand as I had under Miss c.o.x's reign. I was doing algebra as well, although the Juniors were supposed to be through with that delectable study; but I had started out so far behind that I had to keep on with it if I ever hoped to get my degree.

English under Miss Ball continued to be delightful and all of us did good work with her. She had a power of making knowledge desirable by making it interesting, and she made literature delightful because she loved it herself and was never bored. The parallel reading she gave us to do was well chosen and broadening. One thing that especially pleased me about Miss Ball was her cheerful outlook. She did not believe that all good writing was through with,--that literature had died with Tennyson and Thackeray. She read modern poets with as much pleasure as Father himself and actually gave some of the modern novels for parallel reading. Nor did she scorn the five cent magazines.

She encouraged us to do original work. It was a great relief to have a teacher say: "Write what suits you," rather than to give out one of the time-honoured hackneyed themes,--such as: My Afternoon Walk, or A Quiet Sunday Morning, or Thoughts on a Sunset.

My head was so full of plots I could hardly concentrate on one. The trouble was I so often found my plot not to be so very original after all. Miss Ball would say a story was very good but point out its similarity to noted productions, and I would realize that I had been unconsciously influenced. She endeavoured to make us be ourselves at no matter what cost. "A poor thing but mine own" was to be our motto.

"If you want to be successful be modern at least," she would say. "If you must imitate any one, imitate O. Henry or Ferber, even Montagu Gla.s.s. Don't try to write like Edgar Allan Poe. If you are going to write like him, you will do it, anyhow, and a poor imitation of him is terrible. If any of you want to make a living with writing find out what the public likes and what the magazine editors want and do that just as well as you can do it. You need not feel that you are hitching Pegasus to a plough and even if you do, ploughing is a very worthy occupation and there is poetry in it if taken properly." Then she read us some from Masefield's "Everlasting Mercy":

"The past was faded like a dream, There came the jingling of a team, A ploughman's voice, a clink of chain, Slow hoofs, and harness under strain.

Up the slow slope a team came bowing, Old Callow at his autumn ploughing, Old Callow, stooped above the hales, Ploughing the stubble into wales.

His grave eyes looking straight ahead, Shearing a long straight furrow red; His plough-foot high to give it earth To bring new food for men to birth.

O wet red swathe of earth laid bare, O truth, O strength, O gleaming share, O patient eyes that watch the goal, O ploughman of the sinner's soul.

O Jesus, drive the coulter deep To plough my living man from sleep."

"If you can hitch your Pegasus to a plough and 'bring new food for men to birth' you have done a better deed than if you had soared in the skies all the time in the wake of some great men. I consider O. Henry an unconscious philanthropist. He has opened our eyes to the charm of the usual."

Such lessons as these gave us strength to bear with the extreme boresomeness of other cla.s.ses.

We worked off the demerits against us, and by being both good and careful we got no more to sadden our days. Our dummies were neatly folded up and seldom brought out. Just to show that we were still human beings, we did have an occasional spread, and once Miss Plympton let Tweedles and me go under the chaperonage of Miss Ball down to tea with dear old Captain Pat Leahy, the one-legged gate keeper at the crossing.

He was so glad to see us he almost wept. He had sent us a formal invitation but doubted Miss Plympton's giving her consent.

"An' the poosies have been a lickin' uv their furrr all morning to get rready for the coompany an' I got me neighbourr, Mrs. Rooney, to bake me a poond cake for tay."

"Why, Captain, we did not dream you would go to any trouble for us. But we certainly do adore pound cake, and isn't that a beauty?" enthused Dee.

The little table was set ready for tea. You remember how the Captain's gate house looked. It was very tiny, so tiny that you did not see how any one could live in it, but he declared he had more room than he needed. The lower berth from a wrecked Pullman served him as seat by day and bed by night. A doll-baby-sized cooking stove, very s.h.i.+ny and black, was at one side, while a shelf over it was covered with all the china and cooking utensils he needed. A little table, just like the one on sleepers, was hooked in between the seats and a very dainty repast was spread thereon. There were at least a dozen cats but all of them were handsome and healthy and very polite. There had been eight the winter before, counting Oliver, the one we took back to Captain Leahy.

"They will mooltiply an' I have a harrd time findin' good homes for thim. Bett here behind the stove, has presinted Oliverr wid some schtip brothers and sisters. The good Lorrd knows what I am to do wid 'em."

"Please, please let me hold some of them!" and Dee was down on her knees in the corner near Bett's bed. "Look! Look! Their eyes are open! Four of them! Oh, I do want all of them so bad."

Bett seemed perfectly willing to trust Dee with an armful of kittens, indeed I think she was rather relieved to be rid of the care of them for a while, as she sidled out of the door and went trotting up the road, her large handsome tail waving joyously.

"Now she's gone to the cloob or maybe to a suffragette meetin'. Poor Bett has a schtoopid life, confined as she is to rraisin' sooch larrge families," and the old man gave one of his rich vibrant laughs that warmed the c.o.c.kles of your heart.

We talked of Miss Peyton and how much we liked her, but since Miss Ball was a member of the faculty, we refrained from our criticisms of Miss Plympton, although we knew that Captain Leahy was dying to hear all about our latest sc.r.a.pes and how we got out of them and what we had to say of our stern princ.i.p.al. She really was not nearly so stern as we gave her credit for, but we were nothing but girls and young people are always extreme in their opinions. Everybody is either perfectly lovely or perfectly horrid in their eyes. When I look back on my days at Gresham I realize that Miss Plympton's chief fault was that she had no humour, and surely lacking that G.o.d-given attribute was not her fault.

We enjoyed that tea greatly. Captain Leahy certainly had his share and more of humour and his keen comments were a never failing source of delight. Miss Ball was young and full of spirits and good stories, and the little gate house actually rocked with laughter.

We devoured every crumb of Mrs. Rooney's pound cake and the host had to fill his little blue tea pot three times before our thirst was quenched.

Of course Dee had to save a little milk for the kittens and Captain Leahy seemed to think it was perfectly _au fait_ for her to let them lap from her saucer, although Dum and I are of one mind about eating at the table with cats. Now I don't mind a dog at the table at all, provided it is a polite dog who does not help himself until he is told to; but cats!

Ugh! They are entirely too promiscuous, as Mammy Susan says.

CHAPTER XX.

THE FIRE DRILL.

"Young ladies," said Miss Plympton one morning in March, "I fear that in a measure I have been lax in certain duties imposed upon the pupils of Gresham."

A groan from somewhere in chapel, no one knew just where, was the eloquent response to this statement. We had actually pa.s.sed January and February and plunged into the middle of March without getting into any very bad messes. The philosophical among us could look forward to the first of June and release from the stringent rules that bound us. I, for one, was not philosophical at all but had a feeling that I was to spend the rest of my life doing things by the clock and knowing a year ahead just what I was to have to eat for every meal.

I know I do a lot of talking about food but it seems to me that something you have to contemplate three times a day is a rather important factor in life. I used to feel if they would only get mixed up and give us on Tuesday what they usually gave on Wednesday that I could bear it better.

"The duty of which I speak," continued Miss Plympton, ignoring the groan, "is the fire drill that should be regularly practiced and, I regret to say, has not been. The building is as nearly as possible a fire-proof one. Nevertheless, I deem it prudent that we engage in this drill."

"What a bore!" growled some of the girls.

Others welcomed the news with pleasure, "Anything for a change!"