The applause which followed was loud and long. Her heart gave a proud, glad throb at this public compliment, but her face felt as if it were on fire, and she longed to drop under her desk out of sight. It was just at this moment that Mrs. Clelling told her in a low tone that her father had come and she might be excused. How she ever got to the door with all those eyes fastened on her was more than she could tell. She felt as if each foot weighed a ton, and that she was an hour travelling the short space.
Snatching her hat from the cloak-room and pinning a big gray shawl around her, she caught up the carpet-bag and ran down to the gate. An occasional snowflake, like a downy white feather, floated through the air. The wind was raw and damp, and she was glad to climb in behind the sheltering curtains of the old carryall and lean up against her father's rough, warm overcoat.
"Well, Puss, how goes it?" he asked, pulling an old bedquilt up over his knees and tucking it well around her.
"Fine, daddy!" she answered, squeezing his arm in both her mittened hands and snuggling up to him like a contented kitten. "I think now it's the nicest school in the world, and I like it better and better every day."
"Got a good report this week?"
"Yes, I haven't missed a single word in spelling. Mrs. Clelling had to show me nearly two hours about borrowing in subtraction, but I don't have any more trouble with it now, and I had a longer list of adjectives on my language-paper than anybody else in the class."
There was a look of pride in the old farmer's weather-beaten face. He had had little education himself. He had barely learned to read and write in the few short terms he had been able to attend school when he was a boy. He couldn't have told an adjective from any other part of speech, and his wonder at her amount of learning was all the greater on that account. He patted her hand affectionately. "That's right! That's right!" he exclaimed. "The family's dependin' on you, Puss, to do us all credit." Then he began repeating what she had heard a hundred times before. He never failed to tell her the same story as they jogged homeward every Friday night and back again the following Monday morning. She had heard it so often that it sounded in her ears like the familiar refrain of an old song to which she need pay no heed. She only waited patiently until he had finished.
"The older children didn't have no chance when they was young like you. We were too far away from the public schools to send 'm except just a spell spring and fall, and we couldn't afford the pay schools, but after we moved up here and Marthy got married and Tom and Hilliard was big enough to do for 'emselves and getting good wages, times was easier. Ma says to me, 'We'll give the baby a fair start in the world, anyhow,' and I says, 'She'll have the best diplomy that Lloydsboro Seminary can give if I have to carry her there and home again on my back every day till she gets it.'"
There was much more in the same strain to which Magnolia listened, waiting for her turn to speak, as one would wait for an alarm clock to run down when it was striking. The moment he paused she began, eagerly, "I've got something right now that mammy will be proud to see."
Diving under the quilt for the carpet-bag, she opened it and took out a book which lay on top of her clothes.