The morning the little girl started to school, with her Second Reader under one arm, it was so cold that her breath looked like puffs of white steam. Her mother thought she had better walk instead of ride, and bundled her up warmly in a big plaid shawl, her beaver cap, and her thick mittens. When she set off, she was accompanied by the youngest brother, who was going to be a visitor during the morning session. The dogs, with the exception of Luffree (who could not be found), had been chained up along the sunny side of the house to keep them from following her. And as they saw her disappearing across the reservation road, they jumped back and forth, pulling at their collars and howling dismally.
The little girl did not look around at them. Her heart was heavy. All the unhappiness that had been visited upon her that autumn weighed it down. Every day, before sunrise, she had had to get up and eat a raw carrot, because the neighbor woman had prescribed it as a cure for a certain livid spot that had made its appearance on the little girl's cheek, and was thought to be a cancer. The little girl knew that the carrot-eating was useless, since the spot was only the mark of an unsuccessful attempt at tattooing; but she did not care to explain. Then, the cowbird had been sent away; and, as a last blow, she had been told to go to school.
There was no doubt in her mind that her misfortunes were due wholly to the fact that she had precisely thirteen freckles on her pink nose. She had never been able to count them because, when she had covered ten of the tiny brown spots with as many fingers, so much of her nose was hidden that she could count no further. But the biggest brother had assured her that she had them, and that was enough.
She was very tired when they came in sight of the school-house, and the youngest brother had to tug her along by the hand. Luffree, who had come in sight over a hillock ahead of them when they were part way, trotted at her heels and looked up wistfully at her as she half walked, half ran, complaining at every step. Now and then he jumped up and tried to lick her face sympathetically. But she would not let him, for she knew he had warts on his muzzle that he had caught the summer before while teasing a toad.
The school-room was full of smoke and noise when they entered. The scholars were laughing and talking as they crowded about the tall, round stove; and it was sending black, sooty breath into their faces from every crevice of its loosely hung doors. But shortly afterward the noise was silenced by the teacher, who brought his hands together with a resounding clap.
All the pupils in the room, except the little girl, had been to school to him the year before and knew what the signal meant. So she suddenly found herself the only one left standing in the middle of the floor, the girls having preempted the row of benches on the right, and the boys that on the left. But she was not abashed, and her corkscrew curls danced on her shoulders as she looked about.
"Sit down, sit down!" came in whispers from both sides. She took no notice of them, and the teacher, busily preparing the roll-call at his table, did not hear. But soon a ripple of laughter from the school, and a voice from the stove, interrupted his work, and brought him scowling to his feet.
The little girl was standing with one arm extended and one small forefinger pointing past him at the globe, which, for want of a better, was but a fat pumpkin ingeniously impaled on a stick, and peeled over part of its surface in such a manner that the five oceans were represented, while the portion yet unpeeled showed the rude outlines of the six continents.
"We've got lots of pumpkins bigger 'n that at our house," she was saying, her face turned toward "Frenchy," an up-river trapper who studied geography and English spelling between his rounds of the sloughs. "Why, the cellar's full of 'em."
The teacher rapped briskly on the table with his pencil, to call her to order. "Look here," he said, a little crossly, "you mustn't talk out like that. Sit down."