"What makes you so restless?" asked the master one noon when he was dismissing some scholars kept in until their slow wits had mastered their tasks. She, too, had been inattentive and willful.
"I am part of the woods to-day, a chipmunk running about, a cricket which dares not chirp," and she glanced up into the stern eyes with a merry light, "a grasshopper who takes long strides, a bee who goes buzzing, a glad, gay bird who says to his mate, 'Come, let us go to the unknown land and spend a winter in idleness, with no nest to build, no hungry, crying babies to feed, nothing but just to swing in the trees and laugh with the sunshine.'"
"Thou art a queer child. Come, say thy lesson well and we will spend the whole afternoon in the woods. Thou shalt consort with thy brethren the birds, for thou art brimming over."
The others were dismissed with some added punishment. The master took out his luncheon. He was not overpaid, he had no family and lived by himself, sleeping in the loft over the school.
"Oh, come home with me!" the child cried. "Pani's cakes of maize are so good, and no one cooks fish with such a taste and smell. It would make one rise in the middle of the night."
"Will the tall Indian woman give me a welcome?"
"Oh, Pani likes whomever I like;" with gay assurance.
"And dost thou like me, child?"
"Yes, yes." She caught his hand in both of hers. "Sometimes you are cross and make ugly frowns, and often I pity the poor children you beat, but I know, too, they deserve it. And you speak so sharp! I used to jump when I heard it, but now I only give a little start, and sometimes just smile within, lest the children should see it and be worse. It is a queer little laugh that runs down inside of one. Come, Pani will be waiting."
She took his hand as they picked their way through the narrow streets, having to turn out now and then for a loaded wheelbarrow, or two men carrying a big plank on their shoulders, or a heavy burthen, one at each end. For there were some streets not even a wagon and two horses could get through.