CHAPTER VIII
THE FEMALE DELEGATION
There was no question—Susan Barrows inspired and headed the female delegation which early the next morning sallied forth to the district schoolhouse to call on Miss Dunham. Also, there was no doubt in the minds of any of its members before their call was made that the Yankee teacher would hastily retreat as soon as she understood that the ladies of Pennyroyal did not desire her presence among them and, furthermore, would not have it. However, of the result of their visit no one was informed during the ensuing hours of that day.
It was evening, before dark and yet some little time after supper, when Ambrose, ruminating on his back kitchen steps and worrying over the present situation, heard a noise of pots and pans that sounded like a skirmish of light artillery proceeding from his neighbour's house next door. So purposely assuming the expression of innocent solemnity that seemed most to inflame Mrs. Susan, he cautiously stepped across from his back yard to hers. On the door stoop he discovered Susan Jr., who, as the occupant of a hard chair, had both white stockinged legs stuck rebelliously out before her and, resting on her spinal column, held "Fox's Book of Martyrs" open in her lap. However, she was not reading it.
Sensing his approach before ever he could speak, Mrs. Barrows made an immediate appearance. She had a saucepan in her hand and her black eyes were wary. They were well matched adversaries, she and Ambrose, and, although already understanding perfectly the object of his visit, some time must pass before the one or the other could be forced into a surrender.
"Raisin' children is killin' work, Ambrose," Susan began at once, darting a direful glance at her offspring.
And Ambrose's voice was honey: "Most anythin's killin' work, ain't it, Susan?" he returned, depositing himself on the floor of her stoop so that his long legs overhung the side allowing his feet to touch the ground. "I've heard of folks lyin' in bed and doin' nothin' but singin' psa'ms continuous, and yet comin' to the same end."
"It's a lot peacefuller way." Mrs. Barrows' interest was now so plainly concentrated within her saucepan, whirling a kitchen towel around and around in it until its revolutions were fairly dizzying, that nothing could seem more remote from the remarks and behaviour of herself and her neighbour than any introduction of the subject uppermost in both their minds.
However, Susan Jr. did not belong to that noble army whose lives were at the present instant recorded in her lap, for, shutting up "The Book of Martyrs," she sniffed:
"I didn't do nothin' but laugh and tell the female delegation about the King with his ten thousand men who marched up a hill and then marched down again," she explained.
And in the face of this information what was the use of either Mrs. Barrows or Ambrose trying further to avoid the issue? The time had come for a voluntary surrender.
"She won't go, or at least she says she won't, though there ain't no use in me tellin' you, Ambrose, bein's as from Susan Jr.'s words you've already guessed," Susan struck in. "But when we ladies got out to the district school this mornin' in the bilin' sun, what do you think, that girl came a-runnin' out to meet us a-wavin' her hand and smilin' and pretendin' she believed we'd come to welcome her to 'Pennyrile.' And then before any of us ladies could speak and tell her our errand, why, she began showin' us around the old school-house and sayin' she knew we would understand, 'cause we were women too, how hard things would be for her if we didn't help her, until most of the delegates either plumb forgot the reason of our visitation or else was too skeered to speak up. It wasn't so with me!"
Susan paused for a reply, but her neighbour continued his unusual silence, the while pensively engaged in studying the toe of his boot. Coming farther out on to her porch, Mrs. Barrows' belligerent black curls fluttered like a war banner in the breeze.
"Course we women knowed you men tried to make this Miss Em'ly Dunham go, and she wouldn't, but women ain't so easy turned from things they sets out to do. So I told her we didn't want no Yankee school teacher in our district, that we were talkin' things over and meant to get some one to teach our little darkies ourselves. And that our intention in comin' forth to see her had not been to say howdy, but good-bye."
Here the joy of battle, even though it had resulted in defeat, actually spread a retrospective glow over the mind of the speaker, for, with her saucepan resting on her one hip and her dishcloth on the other, she was forgetting her work in the glory of narration.
"What do you think that girl done when I said them last words to her, Ambrose? She put her head down on the doctor's wife's bosom, bein's as she had more'n the rest of us, and actually shed tears, said she thought that the war was over, and wouldn't we let her stay on for a time until mebbe we'd like her better. And at this the ladies was so outdone they kind of scurried off without gettin' down to anything definite. But I fixed up matters on the way home. I told 'em that if Miss Dunham wouldn't go polite fer the askin', why, 'Pennyrile' could try and see what freezin' out would do, so there ain't a single woman or girl in this here town goin' to exchange the time of day with that girl, ask her to come in and set fer a spell or even bow to her on the street."
Still Ambrose remained silent. He knew that Mrs. Barrows was not unkind, but that she loved a fight for its own dramatic sake, and yet what could he do or say to her now that would not by the very force of opposition make things worse for Miner's romance?
Susan was growing restless, for she was missing the clash of steel that usually came from the striking of her neighbour's against hers.
"One of the ladies said we was boycottin'," she concluded, showing plain evidences of her wish to retire into her own home for the night; "seemed kind of foolish to me, bein's as there ain't so much as a boy in it."
Perforce Ambrose had now to withdraw. And yet he said nothing, although as he moved slowly across her side yard Susan thought she heard him mutter: "I was a stranger and you took me in."
Sternly then she ordered her offspring to bed, but, before following her, lingered until the last vestige of her visitor's coat-tail had disappeared, when in feminine fashion she had the final words:
"I reckon it's a good thing we ain't all took in so easy as Ambrose Thompson."