John Creel wears big, heavy shoes of cowhide, and walks across the floor
with the tread of a small army. He hits a few desk-supports on his way
to the blackboard and knocks a paint box off a desk on his way back,
giving rise not only to its initial clatter, but to an indignant
splutter of protest from the small girl who owns the paint box. The
teacher, a nervous maiden lady of prim ideas, is greatly annoyed.
“John Creel!” she exclaims. “Do see if you can’t walk without making a
noise that would wake the dead, and do try not to hit everything within
a mile of you as you move about. If I were a boy of your size, I’d try
to overcome my awkwardness, instead of shambling about that way. Now try
to sit still until recess.”
John, within his outer mail of grinning indifference, has all a big
boy’s sensitiveness to ridicule and reproof. He pretends now, before the
other pupils in his school grade to regard the teacher’s reproof with
scorn, and frequently scrapes his feet along the floor, just to show
that he doesn’t care. But he really wishes that he didn’t fall over
everything as he does, and he wishes that his father could afford to buy
him the neatly fitting, lighter shoes that other boys wear. But he would
not have anyone know these secret longings, for the world, and there is
small chance that the prim one at the desk will have insight enough to
know what goes on in John Creel’s towsled head and never shows itself in
word or deed.
Shambling to a class the next day, John drops a book, from sheer
awkwardness, from sheer lack of muscular control. Miss Prunes-and-Prisms
quite loses patience at this, and calls out,
“John Creel, you may stand in the corner until you can learn to come to
class without making so much noise.”
John goes, stands there in a stoop-shouldered, grinning mockery of young
manhood, and becomes the devoted hater of Miss Prunes-and-Prisms. The
dislike and resentment, which has been undefined in him before,
formulates itself now into a powerful resolution to make her life
miserable for the rest of the term. And, being not without mental
resources, John is able to carry out this resolution; Miss
Prunes-and-Prisms has nervous prostration when school is over, as a
result, and both John and his school bear a bad reputation.