“Hetty,” said my uncle, as the door closed upon Mr. Grey, “I suppose you
must go to school, or the neighbours will say we don’t treat you well.
You ought to be very thankful for such a home as this, Hetty; women are
poor, miserable creatures, left without money. I wish it had pleased
Providence to have made you a boy. You might then have done Jonathan’s
work just as well as not, and saved me his wages and board. There’s a
piece of stone wall waiting to be laid, and the barn wants shingling.
Josiah, now, would be at the extravagance of hiring a mason and a
carpenter to do it.
“Crying? I wonder what’s the matter now? Well, it’s beyond me to keep
track of anything in the shape of a woman. One moment they are up in the
attic of ecstasy; the next, down in the cellar of despondency, as the
almanac says; and it is as true as if it had been written in the
Apocrypha. I only said that it is a thousand pities that you were not a
boy; then you could graft my trees for me, and hoe, and dig, and plant,
and plough, and all that sort of thing. This puttering round, washing
dishes a little, and mopping floors a little, and wringing out a few
clothes, don’t amount to much toward supporting yourself. Let me see:
you have had, since you came here”—and my uncle put on his spectacles,
and pulled out a well-thumbed pocket memorandum—“You’ve had t-w-o
p-a-i-r-s of shoes, at t-h-r-e-e s-h-i-l-l-i-n-g-s a pair, and nine
yards of calico, for a dress, at s-i-x c-e-n-t-s a yard. That ’mounts
up, Hetty, ’mounts up. You see it costs something to keep you. I earned
_my_ money, and if you ever expect to have any, you must earn yours”—and
my uncle took out his snuff-box, helped himself to a pinch, and, with
the timely aid of a stray sunbeam, achieved a succession of very
satisfactory sneezes.
The following day, under the overwhelming consciousness of my feminity
and consequent good-for-nothingness, I made my debut at Master Grey’s
school.
It was a huge barn of a room, ill-lighted, ill-warmed, and worse
ventilated, crowded with pupils of both sexes, from the little, chubby A
B C D-arian, to the gaunt Jonathan of thirty, who had begun to feel the
need of a little ciphering and geography, in making out his accounts, or
superscribing a business letter. There were rows of awkward, mop-headed,
freckled, red-fisted boys; and rosy-cheeked, buxom lasses, bursting out
of their dresses, half-shy, half-saucy, who were much more conversant
with “apple bees,” and “husking frolics,” than with grammar or
philosophy. There was the parson’s son, and the squire’s and the
blacksmith’s son, besides a few who hadn’t the remotest idea whose sons
they were, having originally been indentured to their farming masters by
the overseers of the county alms-house.
Amid these discordant elements Master Grey moved as serenely as the
August moon of a cloudless night; now patting some little curly head,
cruelly perplexed by “crooked S;” now demonstrating to some slow, older
brain, a stumbling-block in Euclid; now closing the creaking door after
an ill-mannered urchin; now overlooking the pot-hooks and hangers of an
unsophisticated scribe, who clutched the pen as if it were a hoe-handle;
now feeding the great, draftless Behemoth of a stove with green hickory
knots, and vainly attempting to thaw out his own congealed fingers.
In a remote corner of the school-room sat Zeb Smith, the village
blacksmith’s son, who came into the world with his fists doubled up, and
had been pugilist-ing ever since. It was Zeb’s proud boast that “he had
whipped every schoolmaster who had ever appeared in Frog-town,” and in
his peaceful retreat from under his bent brows, he was now mentally
taking the measure of Master Grey, ending his little reverie with a
loud, protracted whistle.
Master Grey turned quickly round, and facing his overgrown pupil of
thirty, said, in a voice clear as the click of a pistol, “You will be
pleased not to repeat that annoyance, Mr. Smith.” Zeb bent his
gooseberry eyes full upon the master, and gave him a blast of “Yankee
Doodle.”
All eyes were bent on Master Grey. The gauntlet of defiance was thrown
in his very teeth. Zeb had a frame like an ox, and a fist like a
sledge-hammer, and he knew it. Master Grey was slight, but panther-y; to
their unscientific eyes he was already victimized.
Not a bit of it! See! Master Grey’s delicately white fingers are on
Zeb’s check shirt-collar; there is a momentary struggle; lips grow
white; teeth are set; limbs twist, and writhe, and mingle, and now Zeb
lies on the floor, with Master Grey’s handsome foot on his brawny chest.
Ah, Master Grey! science is sometimes a match for bone and muscle. Your
boxing-master, Monsieur Punchmellow, would have been proud of his pupil.
Peace restored, Master Grey shakes back from his broad forehead his
curly locks, and summons the first class in geography. A row of country
girls, round as little barrels and red as peonies, stand before him,
their respect and admiration for “the master” having been increased ten
per cent. by his victory over Zeb. Feminity pardons anything in a man
sooner than lack of courage. The recitation goes off very well, with the
exception of Miss Betsey Jones, who persists in not reciting at all.
Master Grey looks at her: he has conquered a _man_, but that’s no reason
why he should suppose he can conquer a _woman_. He sees that written in
very legible characters in Miss Bessie’s saucy black eye. Miss Bessie is
sent to her seat, and warned to stay after school, till her lesson is
learned and recited perfectly. With admirable nonchalance, she takes her
own time to obey, and commences drawing little caricatures of the
master, which she places in her shoe, and passes round under the desk,
to her more demure petticoat neighbours.
School is dismissed: the last little straggler is kicking up his heels
in the snow drifts, and Master Grey and Miss Bessie are left alone.
Master Grey inquires if the lesson is learned, and is told by Miss
Bessie, with a toss of her ringlets, that she has no intention of
learning it. Master Grey again reminds her that the lesson must be
recited before she can go home. Bessie looks mischievously at the
setting sun, and plays with the master’s commands and her apron strings.
An hour passes, and Bessie has not opened the book. Master Grey consults
his watch, and reminds her “that it is growing dark.” Bessie smiles till
the dimples play hide-and-seek on her cheek, but she says nothing.
Another hour: Master Grey bites his lip, and, replacing his watch in his
pocket, says, “I see your intention, Miss Betsey. It is quite
impossible, as you know, for us to remain here after dark. To-morrow
morning, if your lesson is not earned, I shall punish you in the
presence of the whole school. You can go.”
“Thank you, sir,” says Bessie, with mock humility, as she crushes her
straw hat down over her bright ringlets.
“Mischief take these women,” Master Grey was heard to utter, as he went
through the snow by starlight to a cold supper. “Shall I conquer Zeb, to
strike my colours to a girl of sixteen?”
There was plenty to talk about over the brown bread and milk at the
farmers’ tea-tables that night; the youngsters all made up their minds
that if there was “a time to play,” it was not in Master Grey’s
school-room; and the old farmers said they were glad the District had a
schoolmaster at last that was good for something, and that they should
think better of city chaps in future for his sake. Even Zeb himself
acknowledged, over his father’s forge, as he mended his broken
suspenders, that Master Grey was a “trump.”
The nine o’clock bell summoned again the Frog-town pupils to the
District School. Master Grey in vain looked in Bessie’s face for any
sign of submission. She had evidently made up her mind to brave him.
After the usual preliminary exercises, she was called up to recite.
Fixing her saucy black eyes upon him, she said, “I told you I would
_not_ learn that lesson, and I have not learned it.” “And I told _you_,”
said Master Grey (a slight flush passing over his forehead), “that I
should punish you if you did not learn it. Did I not?” Bessie’s red lip
quivered, but she deigned him no reply.
“You will hold out your hand, Betsey,” said Mr. Grey, taking up a large
ferule that lay beside him. The colour left Bessie’s cheek, but the
little hand was extended with martyr-like determination; and amid a
silence that might be felt, the ferule came down upon it, with justice
as unflinching as if it were not owned by a woman. Betsey was not proof
against this humiliation; she burst into tears, and the answering tear
in Master Grey’s eye showed how difficult and repugnant had been the
task.
From that day, Master Grey was “monarch of all he surveyed;” and truth
compels me to own, by none better loved or more implicitly obeyed than
by Miss Bessie.
Master Grey’s “boarding week” at my uncle’s had now expired. What a
change had it effected in me! Life was no longer aimless: the old, glad
sparkle had come back to my heavy eye; I no longer dreaded the solitude
of my own thoughts. The dull rain dropping on my chamber roof had its
music for my ears; the stars wore a new and a glittering brightness, and
Winter, with his snowy mantle, frosty breath, and icicle diadem, seemed
lovelier to me than violet-slippered Spring, with roses in her hair. I
still saw Master Grey each day at school. How patiently he bore with my
multiplied deficiencies, and with what a delicate and womanly
appreciation of my extreme sensitiveness he soothed my wounded pride. No
pale-eyed flower fainting beneath the garish noonday heat, ever so
thirsted for the cool dews of twilight, as did my desolate heart for his
soothing tones and kindly words.