IT was only a little way to the school-house in the winter-time because the big brothers could cross the chain of sloughs to it on their skates; but, in the autumn, before the ice was thick, the path led snake-like beside the eastern border of the water, just skirting the frill of green bulrushes and tall marsh-grass, and it was a long distance.
The school-house stood in a wide glade that was the favorite grazing-spot of a band of antelope. It was narrow and unpainted, with two windows on each side and a door in one end. And from its roof, which was not too high for a game of "anti-I-over," protruded a joint of rusty stovepipe. During spring and summer the building stood empty, with the whole sloping green place to itself and the pronghorns, and in every high wind it toppled over, with its pipe pointing to the east, until it was pried into place again. But, after school "took up" in the fall, the glade rang with the laughter and shouts of the scholars, and the antelope crossed the Vermillion and traveled to the rugged country farther west, where, when the snow fell and hid the dried grass, they could browse off the bushes; and the school-house did not topple any more, for its deep coal-bins, which were built against the wall by the door, were full to the brim.
Often on warm summer afternoons, the little girl rode down to the glade beyond the sloughs and, sitting her horse quietly, induced a tawny doe and her twin kids to approach by exciting their curiosity with her bright red flannel petticoat. But if she took the herd along, she did not dare display her skirt, for Napoleon did not like it and had, on one occasion, viciously gored the Indian pony in the ribs when the little girl was busy coaxing the deer. After a wind-storm she liked to climb from her pony to the overturned school-house and walk about on it. Once, she slipped on a window-pane, when she was peering in, and fell through; and would have had to remain there a long time (for the door was locked), if she had not thought to pull the joint of stovepipe out of the roof and crawl through the hole to freedom.
But she had never been near the building when the teacher was in charge. She did not want to go to school, because she meant to learn her lessons at home the way her mother had,—and her mother had been taught by her mother, and, after that, by a governess. The little girl had never talked the matter over at the farm-house, however, for she never doubted that the governess, whatever that was, would come all in good time.
So her surprise and grief were great when she heard one day that she was to learn her lessons from the lanky Yankton man who presided over the school, and along with the other little girls who lived near enough to attend. She held one tearful argument after another with the eldest brother, declaring that she could read and study at home. But he said that a young one nearly six years old ought to know something more than stories—something about the world and arithmetic.
Secretly the little girl did not think it was of any use going to school, for she believed the teacher did not know much. She had even heard the biggest brother say so. And she knew that she knew a great deal. As soon as she could eat with a spoon, she had begun to hold the almanac up in front of her; and she had spoken her first word at fourteen months. It was "Man," and her mother often related how it happened.
She was rocking the little girl to sleep, she said, and singing,
"There was a little man,
And he had a little gun,"
when there sounded a small voice from the cradle. "Man," it said, and the little girl's mother, peeking over the side, saw two wide-open blue eyes. After that, when she was being rocked to sleep, the little girl always said, "Man." Three months later, she had begun to talk in whole sentences. At three years she had been able to make all her letters and read several words, having been taught secretly by the biggest brother. At four, she knew the youngest brother's reading lessons by heart, and could spell every word in the First Reader. At this stage of her education, she put aside such baby things as the "Mother Goose Rhymes," and was deeply interested in the doings of the "Swiss Family Robinson." Winter nights, she had listened to an ever increasing number of stories that were read aloud by her mother. And now she was occupied with "Gulliver." But she did not know one of her multiplication tables, and the neighbor woman, for one, was greatly disgusted with her, and declared that she did not know whatever would become of the child.