Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.. Fern Fanny
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aunt involuntarily qualified her usual bluntness of manner. I uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when dinner was over.
CHAPTER IV
“Hetty,” said my uncle, as the door closed upon Mr. Grey. “I suppose you must go to school, or the neighbors 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 two pairs of shoes, at three shillings a pair, and nine yards of calico, for a dress, at six cents 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 trammels 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 delicate 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 any thing 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 Bessy 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 neighbors.
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 again 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 learned, I shall punish you in the presence of the whole school. You can go.”
“Thank you, sir,” says Bessie, with mock humility, as she crushed 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 colors 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 color 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