It was an immense relief to Judith to find that it was only a dream, that the sun still shone and the birds sang and her mother was frying corncakes for breakfast and Craw was chasing the big black hog out of the yard and everything was going to be the way it was before.
CHAPTER III
But with the growth of this harmony with natural things, Judith developed a constantly growing tendency to clash with the life of the school and the home kitchen and the kitchens of the various relatives with whom the Pippingers visited. She was considered by her aunts and other female relatives "a wild, bad little limb," and her contempt for the decent and domestic scandalized them more and more as she grew older. Lena Moss could not for her life understand how it was that Judith had learned to read and write and figure better than almost any other child in the school; for she was anything but studious. In fact she never seemed to pay the slightest attention to her studies. She flatly refused even to try to learn Lena's long and carefully prepared list of all the counties and county towns in Kentucky; and the battles of the Revolutionary and Civil wars, with their accompanying dates, found no lodgment in her mind. Instead of applying herself to these, she munched apples, chewed slippery elm and sassafras, stared idly out of the window, bedeviled the child who sat in front of her, cut folded bits of paper into intricate designs or drew pictures on her slate, the desk, the seat, the floor, the back of the pinafore of the girl in front, any available space within her reach.
These pictures were the curse of Lena's existence. They were to be found everywhere: on the desks, the walls, the floor, the blackboard, the window casings. Outside they decorated the whitewashed wall of the school building, the tops of big flat stones, the fences, the trunks of trees where the bark had been stripped away, every place where a piece of chalk or a bit of black crayon could function.
The pictures, invariably of human beings or animals, were usually comic, satirical or derisive. That they showed great vigor and clarity of vision would have meant nothing to Lena even if she had known it. They were, in her phraseology, "not nice!" They were frequently disrespectful. The morning after the visit of the county superintendent, a large picture in white chalk was found on the blackboard wickedly caricaturing the features of that august personage. The picture was done in profile and exaggerated irreverently the large, bulbous nose, the receding forehead, and the many chins reaching around to a fleshy, pendulous ear. Poor Lena was hard put to it to find a way to control this unruly member of her school. Having much less force of character than her pupil, the advantage of years and vested authority availed her little.
When asked why she had done thus and so, Judith's almost invariable reply was: "Cuz I had to."
"Judy, why hain't you a better gal at school?" Bill asked one morning, trying to look sternly at his favorite daughter across the mush and milk. "Lizzie May says the teacher has a heap o' grief with you. Why don't you mind the teacher, Judy?"
"I do mind her, dad—all I can," Judith returned without looking up. She had the syrup pitcher in her hand and was absorbed in pouring sorghum onto her plate in a very thin stream. Presently she set the pitcher down and handed the plate across the table to her father.