"Huh!" grunted the teacher, taking the book from her and tossing it upon his table. "Have you ever been to school before?"
"No," answered the little girl.
"Then you'll start right in where everybody else does," he said. "Read this line. 'Do you see a man?'"
"'Doyouseeaman?'" she repeated, still watching him.
"Look at the chart and read it," he commanded furiously.
An unfriendly light suddenly shone in the little girl's eyes. She stepped back and summoned all her pride to resent the indignity that he was putting upon her before the whole school.
"Oh, I don't want to read that baby talk," she cried, "and—and—I won't, and I 'm going home to my mother."
The teacher swayed in his wrath like a tall cottonwood. "You don't, eh? You won't, eh?" he bellowed, and, stooping down, plucked the little girl by the ear.
This time it was the Swede boy who interrupted the course of events in front. He leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the boy ahead, and then, with an inarticulate shout, threw himself upon the boy and began to maul him. Instantly the teacher, yearning to use his hands upon some one, descended upon them and wrested them apart. But they clinched again and, continuing to fight, managed so to misdirect their kicks that they reached, not each other, but his lanky, interfering person.
And, while the battle raged, the little girl fled out of the school-house toward the pinto and pulled up the picket-pin. The teacher did not see her go, but, in retreating from an unusually vicious blow of the Swede boy's fist, caught sight of her just as she was leading her horse to an ant-hill to mount. With a hoarse call for her to return, he started after her, bearing in his train the two boys, who, still struggling, impeded his progress.