"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and
spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy _me_?"
That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a
rock.
Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly
compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my
seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of
me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself
afresh.
"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big
girls come and help me?"
With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to
the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together,
after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch
from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes.
By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were
scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.
"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril."
My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on
the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious
position.
"Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the
scholars, "put down your slates and listen."
Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my
side and pointing down to me:
"This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little
vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience she
has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil the
child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their
children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there is
no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is
she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her
unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was
sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop
your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ."
With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped
back and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane out
of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an
impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if
I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was
holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and
limber.
I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was
conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--the
pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I
thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I
thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered
what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady,
and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before
all the village children.
At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I
was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my
lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer
if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to
the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange
thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.
Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming
out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin
Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the
gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp
voice:
"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without
permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."
Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his
big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands
pulled it down hard on his head.
"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him
with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike.
The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped
his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck
her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against
the wall.
Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to
him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the
scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little
stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the
school.