"Let me see your hand," he said.
Instead of one hand, Catherine instantly thrust out both, under his very nose.
"Ferule me!" she cried. "Ferule both my hands, Mr. Brench! Ferule me all you want to! I don't care how hard you strike! But you are a bad, cruel man, and I hate you!"
Still holding the ruler, Czar Brench gazed at her for some moments in silence; he seemed almost dazed.
"You are the first scholar that ever spoke to me like that," he said at last. A singular expression had come into his face; he was having a new experience. For another full minute he stared down at the girl, but he apparently had no longer any thought of feruling her.
"Take your seat," he said to her at last; and, after sending the still trembling Rufus to his seat, he dismissed the grammar class.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened afterwards. There were but three weeks more of school, and the term ended about as usual.
The school agent and certain of the parents in the district who believed in the importance of rigid discipline wished to have Czar Brench teach there another winter; but for some reason he declined to return. At the old Squire's we thought that it was, perhaps, because he had failed to conquer Catherine.