am sorry to hear that. Has something happened to recall you to New York?
I remember you wrote that you would gladly stay one year with us in our
wild mountain country.” Then he smiled as he asked, “Have you found it
too wild?”
The young teacher also smiled, but she said seriously: “No, indeed! I
love the West! I felt smothered in that city of walled-in cañons, where
the sweep of the wind is never felt. I glory in your rugged mountains. I
forget that life holds much that is petty when I look at them,
especially at night when they are outlined against the sky, and even the
stars are much nearer here. In New York heaven seems farther away.”
“But, my dear girl,” the banker said, “If you like it here so very much,
why desert us?”
“It is because I have been dismissed by the local board of education.”
If there was a twinkle in the brown eyes of the speaker, Mr. Clayburn
did not notice it. He tapped upon his desk with the pencil he held, and
a frown gathered between his eyes.
“Miss Bayley,” he said after a thoughtful moment, “I alone am at fault.
I should not have entrusted to a man without education the power to
engage and dismiss a teacher.” Then, looking up inquiringly, “Which one
of the three have you offended?”
“All of them, I think,” was the reply. “The little girl is indignant
because I have to acknowledge that the Martin children are brighter
pupils, the mother feels that she has a personal grievance because I
will not devote my free time, whenever she wishes, to preparing papers
for her to read at your women’s club, as her own compositions, while the
father considers me insubordinate because I have declared my
independence.”
“Good for you, Miss Bayley!” was the rather astonishing exclamation. The
banker looked his approval. Then, rising, he held out his hand. “Don’t
begin to pack your trunk, and, as I said before, the first of the year I
will make regular visits to the district schools. Let me know if you
need new books or anything else to help your work along.”
When they were again on the street, Miss Bayley caught the hand of the
small girl and said: “Dixie, come with me! We’re going to the movies to
celebrate.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TEACHER REVOLUTIONIZES
Surprising things happened the following Monday morning in the little
log schoolhouse. After leaving the theater on the Saturday previous,
Miss Bayley, who had been told by the one having authority to procure
whatever she might need for her little classes, had returned with Dixie
to the book department of the emporium, and had purchased several graded
readers from the first to the eighth. The light of a new resolve shone
in her eyes as she called upon Dixie Martin to lead in the Good-Morning
song.
When this was done, Miss Bayley looked about her at her little
straggling group of mountain pupils and made a startling announcement.
“Girls and boys,” she said brightly, “I have decided to change the old
régime, which means that we are going to desert the former way of doing
things and start in on a new. To begin with, I am going to give you all
an examination in reading and place you in the grades where I believe
you belong.”
Jessica Archer was on her feet in an instant, saying: “My pa wouldn’t
let you do that. He says nothin’ is ever to be done diff’rent in this
here school unless he tells the teacher to do it.”
“Kindly be seated, Jessica, and hereafter do not speak without first
raising your hand and receiving permission to do so.” The teacher’s tone
was firm, and, although the little “sheep-princess” pouted and looked
her defiance, she said no more just then.
“I have here,” Josephine Bayley continued, “eight new graded readers,
that are very attractively illustrated. I will begin with the first, and
you may each read one of the little stories; then we will progress to
the second, and so on, and, when you have reached the book which is too
difficult for you, we will know exactly in which grade you belong. Does
this method seem fair to you? Ira Jenkins, what do you think?”
The long, lank, overgrown son of the burly blacksmith flushed to the
roots of his hair, but he managed to uncurl his ungainly length from the
much-carved desk that was too small for him, and say stutteringly:
“Yes’m, Miss Bayley. Seems like ’tis to me. I should say ’twas fair
enough.”
“Do any of you, except Jessica Archer, object to being regraded
according to your ability to read?” There was no dissenting voice, and
so the first book was handed to Dixie Martin, who, with an amused smile,
read the tiny story that told the adventures of a pussy-cat. When the
book had been passed from pupil to pupil, it was found that even those
simple words had been too difficult for the two little children of Mr.
Archer’s Mexican overseer, and so Franciscito and Mercedes were classed
as “first readers.”
The six-year-old twins of the trapper, Sage Brush Mullet, poor, forlorn
little Maggie and Millie, stopped at the second.
Jessica Archer did well enough in the third, but could not read many of
the words in the new fourth, and was so graded. With her was Carol
Martin, but to the very evident indignation of the little daughter of
Mr. Sethibald Archer, Dixie, Ken, and Ira Jenkins were placed above her.
Each was asked to read one of the last three stories in the fifth book.
Ken and Dixie hesitated not at all, but Ira did stumble over the longer
words, and the first story in the sixth proved quite beyond him, and so
he was placed there.
Ken, although two years older than his sister, had a more mathematical
mind, and found the seventh reader rather difficult, but Dixie reached
the last, and was declared by the teacher to be in the eighth grade.
Miss Bayley purposely avoided looking in the direction of the irate
little girl in the much-be-ruffled dress as she said: “You are now each
placed in the grade where you should be, and I am sure that we shall in
the future make real progress.” Then, glancing at the clock, she
smilingly added: “Ten already, and time for recess. Dixie, you may
collect the new books please, and Ken, will you lead the line to the
playground?”
But Jessica Archer did not wait to go out with the others. Catching her
hat from its hook on the wall, she darted out, and when, fifteen minutes
later, Miss Bayley rang the bell, recalling the pupils to their lessons,
she was not at all surprised to find that the rebellious little
“sheep-princess” was not among them.
Miss Bayley was not long kept in doubt as to what the absence of Jessica
Archer meant. Having decided to carry her new method of grading through
all the subjects,—reading, writing, and arithmetic,—the teacher had sent
Ira Jenkins and Ken to the board to work out rather advanced sums, when
the sound of hurrying wheels was heard without, and a moment later the
short, stocky Mr. Sethibald Archer burst into the room, his face
flushed, his small gimlet-like eyes blinking very fast.
“Say, Miss Bayley,” he blurted out, waiving the formality of a greeting,
“what’s this here my gal’s been tellin’ me ’bout you upsettin’ methods
which I started and makin’ out she’s a numskull alongside of those—those
no-account Martins? I’ll not have it, I tell you,” he blustered. “I’m
governin’ board of this here school, and things have got to be done as I
say, or you can pack and leave this here locality on to-morrow mornin’s
stage. D’ye hear?”
Miss Bayley did not take advantage of his pause to defend her action,
and, still further angered by her calm, he went on, his high-pitched
voice growing louder, if that were possible. “I’d like to know where
from you got your authority,—_you_, an upstart teacher we don’t know
nothin’ about. Who was it told you to spend money that’s not yours
buying new books that we don’t need for this here school?”
So indignant had been the self-important little man, and so loud his
voice, that he had not heard the arrival of a horse and buggy without,
nor was he aware that another listener had stopped in the doorway to
await the end of the tirade. When the speaker paused to take a breath,
the newcomer stepped into the school-room, saying in a voice, the calm,
even tones of which did not betray the just anger that he felt: “Mr.
Archer, may I answer the question you have just put to Miss Bayley? I,
Samuel Clayburn, head of the governing board of education in this
district, gave our teacher full authority to purchase whatever she
believed was needed to further the interests of this little district
school, and I am indeed glad to find that she is now introducing
progressive methods.” Then he added, in a pleasanter tone, for it was
hard for the portly banker to be unkindly severe: “Mr. Archer, I regret
that the delivery of mail in the mountain sections is so dilatory,
otherwise you would have known by now that I have decided to devote more
of my time to the schools in the outlying districts, and so will no
longer require your aid. I will bid you good-morning.”
The stocky, florid man was clenching and unclenching his hands, and
almost bursting with indignation. When the quiet voice ceased speaking,
he blurted out with: “It’s an outrage, that’s what it is! A cooked-up
scheme of this here new teacher’s to oust me from a place that’s
rightfully mine. But I’ll get even. I’ll take my darter out of this here
school. Come along, Jessie, I won’t have you pizened by no such
corruptin’ influence.”
With a toss of her curls, the little girl flounced out of the door,
closely following her irate father, and they were soon heard to drive
away.
“Miss Bayley,” the banker said, “I regret this most unfortunate
incident. Last Saturday, immediately after your departure from the bank,
I wrote Mr. Archer that I would no longer need his services, but the
stage probably has not as yet passed his place. Realizing that something
of this very nature might occur when he did receive the letter, I
decided to drive over, knowing that otherwise you would have to bear
alone the brunt of his wrath.”
“Thank you,” Josephine Bayley said simply. “I am indeed sorry to have
been the cause of this unpleasantness, but really, Mr. Clayburn, I do
believe that the other pupils can now have a much better chance.”
The banker nodded, “I am sure of it,” he said, as he smiled about at the
solemn faces.
“My pupils,” Miss Bayley said to them, “this gentleman is Mr. Samuel
Clayburn, of the board of education, and he it is who made us a gift of
those attractive new readers that have pleased you all so much.”
Carol and Dixie arose at once, and the others shyly and stragglingly
followed. Then curtsying, as Miss Bayley had taught them to do when she
introduced a visitor, in a faltering chorus they piped, “Good-morning,
Mr. Clayburn.” But it was Dixie who thought to add, “And thank you for
the books.”
“You are very welcome, and I’m sure you’ll make good use of them,” was
the genial reply. Then, turning again to the girl-teacher, he added: “I
hope no further unpleasantness will result from this, Miss Bayley, but
if there does, report to me at once. You can telephone to me from the
inn.”
Later, as he was driving down the pine-shaded cañon road, the good man
was thinking, “How I do wish my Sylvia could attend this mountain
school. She seems to be making very little headway with her French
governess. If only she could live awhile the simple, healthful life that
the little Martins are living, how much good it would do her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE RETURN OF TOPSY
“Dixie Martin, come quick if you want to see something. Oh-ee! It’s
something you’ve been wanting for weeks and weeks.”
It was Carol who called. The small curly-headed girl was hanging out
clothes in the sunny yard, back of the log cabin, while the older sister
stood on a box beside a washtub in the shade of a spreading pine tree.
Hearing the excited voice of her little sister calling to her, Dixie
hastily wrung out the pair of patched blue rompers that she was washing,
and, with soapy suds glistening on her hands, she ran around the house,
wondering what she was to see.
To her great joy, coming across the garden toward them was no less a
creature than her long-strayed and much-loved cat, Topsy.
With a cry of delight, Dixie wiped the suds from her hands on her blue
all-over apron, and rushing at the rather thin and rusty-looking cat,
she caught it up in her arms and kissed it on the nose, eyes, and even
on the paws.
“Oh, you dearest, darlingest, belovedest!” she exclaimed. “Wherever have
you been? You look like a reg’lar tramp cat, and no wonder,—your coat
hasn’t been sleeked for three weeks if it’s a day. Didn’t you love your
Dixie any more, that you ran away and wouldn’t come back? You don’t know
how lonesome I’ve been.”
The little girl’s face was burrowed in the soft black hair. The
pussy-cat purred its contentment when its little mistress sat on a stump
near by to cuddle it in her lap, but suddenly Topsy flipped up an ear
and sat erect, as though she had just thought of something. Then, before
the astonished girls could guess what it was all about, away the cat
darted toward an old abandoned shed down near the apple-orchard, soon
reappearing with a very small something in its mouth.
The older girl had turned back to the washtub, but another exclamation
as excited as the first brought her whirling about.
“Dix Martin, Topsy’s done gone and had kittens. Oh-ee, do look! Isn’t it
a little beauty? It’s black, like its mamma, but its spots are white.”
Topsy, holding her tail proudly erect, placed the wee pussy at Dixie’s
feet, then looked up in a manner that seemed to say, “There now, what do
you think of that for a baby?”
Dixie lifted the soft cuddly little thing, and was about to tell the
happy mother that it was indeed a darling, when, with a queer little
short meow, the cat again turned and trotted off toward the shed, to
soon reappear with another wee pussy, but this one was as white as the
driven snow.
“Oh-h!” the two girls breathed a long sigh of admiration, for never had
there been a lovelier pussy, they were sure. Just then Ken, with an ax
over his shoulder, appeared from the mountain-trail, whither he had been
to cut wood for their winter fires.
“What you-all got there?” he called. And when he saw that they were
beckoning excitedly, he threw his axe to the ground and ran toward them.
“Gee whiz! Aren’t they beauts?” the boy exclaimed with genuine
admiration. “They’re ’most as handsome as my little pig,” he added
teasingly.
“Why, Ken Martin, little pigs aren’t warm and soft and cuddly, nor baby
goats, either,” Carol began, when Dixie interrupted, the light of
inspiration in her thin, freckled face.
“Oh, Caroly, you’ve always wished you had a white pussy, and so you may
have this one all for your very own, and Ken can have the other.”
“Me?” the boy exclaimed wide-eyed. “I don’t want a cat. They’re pets for
girls.”
“Well, maybe that’s so. Girls like cuddly things.” Then, to the mother
puss, Dixie said: “Well, Topsy-cat, we’re ever so glad that you have
such nice babies, and won’t Jimmy-Boy be pleased when he wakes up, but
now I must get back to my work, for this is wash-day. I want to get
through as soon as ever I can, for something—oh, so interesting!—is
going to happen this very afternoon. I am to go up to teacher’s to have
a lesson.”
Dixie did not say what the lesson was to be, but she glanced at her
sister and thought, “If Carol only knew that I am to have a lesson in
making her a blue-silk dress, wouldn’t she be the happiest girl that
ever was?”
The younger girl had no desire to accompany Dixie to Miss Bayley’s
cabin. The very word “lesson” did not appeal to her on a glorious
Saturday. After taking the kittens back to the shed and making them a
softer bed, the girls finished the washing; then at two o’clock they
donned their best gingham dresses and started out together, but soon
parted, as Carol was going to the Valley Ranch to visit Sue Piggins, to
hear what had happened during the week at the girls’ boarding-school
over in Reno, which Sue attended.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DIXIE’S LESSON IN DRESSMAKING
Miss Josephine Bayley was anticipating with real pleasure the coming of
the little girl who was to have her first lesson in dressmaking.
The door of the small cabin stood welcomingly open, for it was one of
those wonderful, balmy days known as Indian summer, and in Nevada they
seem lovelier than elsewhere.
“See these beautiful ruddy leaves that I found this morning, Dixie,
dear,” said the young teacher, who stood at the center-table arranging
them, as the small girl appeared in the doorway. “I climbed a little
lost trail, or, it was almost lost, it was so overgrown with tangled
vines and scraggly dwarf pines.”
The great bowl of flaming-leaved branches was placed in one corner of
the room, the table swept clear of books and magazines, and then the
paper pattern was opened while Josephine Bayley continued, smiling
across at her little visitor: “Dixie, how I wish that trails could talk.
I’d love to know whose feet trod it so many times that a path was beaten
there. Perhaps you have heard, have you, dear?”
Dixie shook her red-gold head. “Not ’zactly heard, Miss Bayley,” she
replied, “but most likely ’twas the year of the big strike over at
Silver City. My dad said that over-night, almost, these lonely, silent
mountains were swarmed with men from everywhere, and they climbed all
about with their pickaxes, hunting for other veins, but they didn’t find
them. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m glad, glad they didn’t.”
“So am I, Dixie,” the girl-teacher agreed, “for they would have dug ugly
holes in these mountains and cut down the wonderful old pines. I would
rather have nature at its wildest for my home than a castle of
glistening white marble surrounded with artificial parks, however
beautiful.”
“Oh, teacher, so would I.” The small girl had drawn close to the table,
and her gold-brown eyes looked as though they were seeing a vision.
“Miss Bayley,” she said, “I keep remembering. I can’t forget it. That
violin music, I mean. And this morning, early, when I was up before the
others, out under the pines, getting ready to do the washing, the sun
came up over old Piney Peak, and it was just like a fairy shower of
gold. Then a lark sang, and a little breeze stirred in the pine trees.
Teacher, Miss Bayley, I think I could play it on a violin, if I had
one.”
“Little Dixie Martin, you shall have one! You shall have a violin!” the
young woman said, deeply touched. Then she added: “I only wish that I
knew how to give you lessons, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
That is a true saying, dear, and you and I will keep watching for the
way. Now, little ladykins, if you will stand up very straight and tall,
I’d like to see if this pattern hangs well. I’m going to pin it on you,
if you don’t mind, to get an idea of what kind of dress it will make.”
Miss Bayley did not tell that her real reason for wishing to pin on the
pattern was to discover how much larger she would have to cut one before
making a certain piece of shimmery green silk into a dress for Dixie.
When the pattern was on, the girl-teacher made many penciled notes on a
bit of brown paper. “There, now,” she exclaimed, “we’ll cut out the
material.”
Dixie, watching, suddenly put one hand on her heart, as though to still
its too-rapid beating. “Oh, teacher,” she said in a little awed voice,
“this is a wonderful minute, when we’re really going to begin to make a
blue-silk dress for Carol.” Then she added almost wistfully: “How I do
hope that dear old Grandmother Piggins knows that you are helping us.
Before she died she sent for me and she said, ‘Dixie, dear, I’m glad to
go, but I’m praying that somebody will be sent to take my place with
you.’”
Then impulsively the child cuddled close to the girl-teacher and looked
up with love shining in her eyes. “Miss Bayley, you are the answer to
Grandmother Piggins’s prayer.”
Kneeling, the young woman held the little girl in a close embrace, as
she said in a voice that trembled: “Dixie, I have wandered far, and have
lost the simple faith, but, oh, what it means to me to know that I, even
I, have been found worthy to be used as an answer to prayer!”
Then rising, she merrily added, “Now thread a needle, little Miss
Seamstress, and sew these two edges together.”
Sitting in a low rocker, by a sunny open window, Dixie took painstaking
little stitches, almost measuring each one, but when her girl-teacher
noticed that, she laughingly said: “You needn’t be so careful, dear. The
big thing in basting is to have the notches match and keep the edges
together.”
For a moment the machine, which had been borrowed from the inn, hummed a
merry song, then teacher looked up to see Dixie sitting very still, her
sewing in her lap, while her eyes were gazing between fluttering white
curtains and out toward the mountains.
“A penny for your dreams,” Miss Bayley called gayly, as she paused to
snap a thread.
Dixie turned, smiling radiantly. “Oh,” she laughed, “I was ’magining
ahead, I guess. I was wondering what lovely things would happen to Carol
in this pretty blue silk dress.” Then, a little anxiously, she added,
“There’d ought to be a party, shouldn’t you think, Miss Bayley?”
“Of course there should be a party, and, what is more, there shall be
one, too. When is Carol to have a birthday?”
“November sixth, and that comes on Saturday,” the little girl replied.
“I was meaning to make a cake, and there’d ought to be one more candle.
Grandma Piggins gave Carol eight little candles last year, but now we
need nine.”
Miss Bayley was again treading the machine and making it hum. Then, when
she paused to adjust the ruffler, she glanced up brightly to find that
the gold-brown eyes were still watching, apparently waiting. “We’ll have
that party, dear,” the girl-teacher declared, “and the one more candle,
I’ll promise that, but I’m going to keep it for a surprise for all of
you little Martins.”
“Oh, Miss Bayley,” said the small girl, clapping her hands gleefully,
“won’t that be the nicest? It’ll be a ’sprise for Baby Jim and for Ken
and me, too, as well as for Carol.”
Teacher nodded, though at that particular moment she had not the vaguest
idea what the surprise-party was to be. Then she added “When is _your_
birthday, Dixie, dear?”
“Mine? Oh, I came in February, on the snowiest, coldest, blustriest day,
dad said. Brother Ken was born in April, but Baby Jim,” the girl’s voice
softened to a tone of infinite tenderness when she spoke that name, “our
little treasure-baby was born on Christmas day.” Then she added with
that far-away expression which was so often in her eyes, “Grandmother
Piggins said when little souls are sent to our earth on Christ’s
birthday, they have been specially chosen to be His disciples.”
“It may be true, dear.” Miss Bayley had thought so little of these
things. She had been brought up in boarding-schools without loved ones
to guide. Then she added, as she adjusted a long, straight piece of blue
silk that was soon to be a ruffle. “Of one thing I am sure, and that is
that the influence of a beautiful life lives here on earth long after
the form of the loved one has passed from our sight. Grandmother Piggins
must have been a dear, dear old lady.”
“She was,” the child said simply. “Everybody loved her.”
“What epitaph could one more desire?” was what the girl-teacher thought.
Then the machine began to hum, and Dixie bent over to watch the spindle
fly, and to see the strip of silk that was straight on one side come out
in the prettiest ruffle on the other.
“I’m glad it’s near the end of October now,” the small girl said with a
little sigh, “for I just couldn’t wait more’n two weeks to give that
dress to Carol.”
Then, as there was no more basting that she could do, Dixie wandered
about the pleasant, home-like room, reading the titles on the books that
were everywhere in evidence. Suddenly she paused before a photograph.
“Why, Miss Bayley,” she exclaimed, “the boy in this picture looks almost
’zactly like you.”
“He is my brother, dear, two years younger than I am,” the girl-teacher
replied, looking up with a smile.
“Oh, I remember now, you did tell me you had a brother Tim. Is he coming
West some time to see you, Miss Bayley?”