“What do you think of that?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer he spread the contents-bill upon the table.
“This is better,” he went on, bitterly. “Read this!” And she read:
RUCTIONS IN LEARNING'S HOME.
THE PRESIDENT'S FLANK ATTACK.
FOURS TO A PAIR.
THE PAGAN RETIRES AND THE POLE.
“Oh, the brutes! How could they?” May exclaimed. “But what does it mean?”
“You have it all there,” he said, touching the bill; “all in two or three lines of cheerful insult, as is our American fashion. In spite of the opinion of every leading lawyer in the State, sixteen—fanatics, to give them the benefit of the doubt, voted that a disbelief in Christian dogma was the same thing as 'open immorality.' The Father of Lies made such men!”
“Did no one vote for you?”
“Two, Krazinski and some one else, I think 'twas little Black, and two papers were blank. But fancy the President speaking against me, though he has a casting-vote. All he could say was that the parents were the only proper judges of what a student should be taught. Let us grant that; I may have been mistaken, wrong, if you like; but my fault was not 'open immorality,' as specified in the Statute. They lied against me, those sixteen.”