“Well, anything most; I’m handy at everything; served my time as shoemaker, worked some at tailoring and blacksmithing and on the farm, and teached school in the winter. Say, you now,” exclaimed Swipes, with a sudden gleam of eagerness. “What kind of a place would it be to open a select school?”
The young hunter could not forbear a laugh at the simplicity of the question.
“I don’t think I could give you much encouragement in that direction. The country is most too young to give much attention to their schools, as yet, but I’ve no doubt there will be a fine chance in a short time, for such an institution. I am quite aware there is nothing more beneficial to a new settlement than a church and school.”
“Say Mr. Wainwright,” said Mr. Swipes, looking up in the face of the young hunter, with no little interest. “You look to me and you talk just as if you’ne been a school teacher.”
“No,” laughed Fred, “I never taught school a day in my life.”
“You’ve got larning enough to do so. I swan if you haint! when I hear a man say taught for teached, and beneficial, and all them kind of words, I always set him down as knowing enough to teach school. Perhaps you notice I don’t allers speak grammatically and call my words exactly right; but don’t let that give you the idea that I havn’t got no education. I’m sensible of the mistakes after I make them, and when it’s too late to help ’em——Jingo!”
Leonidas Swipes raised his hands in the most profound amazement, as Florence Brandon suddenly walked around the wagon, came up to where they were sitting, and asked in the most musical of tones, “Is there anything more to which you will be helped?”
The discomfited Yankee for a time was unable to find his tongue. He sat gazing at the picture as one enraptured. His companions now found their tongues, and both replied that they were amply provided and wished for nothing more, whereupon she turned and disappeared.
Poor Fred Wainwright was in a dilemma fully as sore as that of Swipes. He had no thought of the girl until the exclamation of the latter. She halted within a few feet of where he was reclining upon the ground, and when Swipes became confused she turned toward the young hunter, and looked in his face with a smile as if she would like to have him join her in the enjoyment of the scene. But Fred’s face was as red as a Comanche’s when he looked up and encountered those soulful eyes.
Ah! those eyes with their deep heavenly blue! had he not looked into them before? Those red lips! had he not heard the sweetest words of his life come from them? and that queenly head; had he not bent over that! But stay! this will never do.