He occupied his first hour in slyly flipping wet-paper wads at a picture of Shakspere pinned above him on the wall. The little girl, who was well versed in all school tricks from her years of sitting in a rear seat, knew what he was doing, but hesitated to speak to him. At last, seeing that he was attracting the attention of all the other children, she sent him to the blackboard to copy his spelling ten times.
By ingenious counting he soon completed his work, and then began to draw pipe-stem men for the Dutchman's youngest to giggle at. He was sent back to his desk, where he spent the time in wriggling his ears.
The little girl saw that trouble was before her,—saw, too, that her position would be imperiled if she failed in her discipline. That night, when the biggest brother helped her to get supper and make the beds, she shared her fears with him.
"It's one thing to get a school," she said sorrowfully, as he tried to comfort her; "it's another to keep it."
But next day she called the pupils to order cheerfully.
It was evident that the young Pole had been well discussed by the children. They watched him constantly to see what new prank he was preparing for their entertainment. He swaggered under their astonished gaze, and insolently made requests aloud without raising his hand for permission to speak. Just before recess, upon chancing to glance his way, the little girl caught him tossing a note over to the other side of the room.
She suddenly came to a halt beside his desk, and anger, strange and almost unreasonable, possessed her. It flashed into her mind that before her, ignorant, slouchy, indifferent, was one who, by his mischief, threatened to deprive her of what her mother and the biggest brother had long desired, what she herself yearned after with all the earnestness of her soul. She could scarcely refrain from attempting to send him off then and there! She trembled with indignation. Meeting her eyes for a moment, he saw a dangerous glint in them, and for the rest of the morning was more circumspect.
But at noon, a full dinner, a lazy hour, and the ill-concealed admiration of the other children put him again into a mean mood. He got out of line in marching, and pulled the hair of one of the little fellows from the West Fork. The little girl passed the afternoon with her eyes upon him. When he went so far that the school was interrupted, she walked toward him and gave him some task, or stayed beside his desk while she was hearing a class. But though in a measure it kept him in subjection, her power over the others, she found, was being woefully lessened, and her discipline destroyed. At dismissal she took up her hat and pail with a weariness that was not physical, but of the spirit, and rode home, bowed and silent.
But, unknown to her, the Polish boy defeated his own evil ends that same evening, and solved to her satisfaction, and to that of the committee and the scholars, the question of her rule.
He was sent to the Swede's to inquire after a turkey that his mother thought had strayed up the river and nested near the reservation road; and, in asking after the hen, he departed from his errand long enough to boast to the Swede boy of his fun at the school-house. The latter listened to him eagerly, though quietly, grinned slyly once or twice during the story, and at the close of it remarked, with his finger on his nose, that he thought he had better go back to school again himself.