Nothing so soft and wonderful as Dawn's hands had ever touched the boy's face before. He sat and took the experience in a dazed delight, subsiding and shrinking at every blow which yet gave him a delicious sense of pleasure as if it were some kind of attention she was offering him. Probably in no other way could she have ever won this boy's admiration.
After the chastisement was over he sat still, blushing and smiling sheepishly, as if he were glad of her victory, while all the rest of the school stood gaping in amazement. Their hero had fallen! He had been conquered by a woman, a woman who was only a girl! How could any of them ever again hope to stand against a teacher, if the heart of the strong Dan Butterworth melted like wax in her hands?
Dawn whirled upon them all.
"You may sit down," she commanded grandly, and they sat.
"What is your name?" she asked, turning back to Daniel.
"He'th Dan Butterwuth," volunteered an A-B-C from the front of the room.
Dawn looked Daniel straight in the eye, with a long, burning, scathing scorn.
"You great big baby!" she said at last, her cheeks a beautiful red, her eyes bright with the excitement of the encounter. "Aren't you ashamed?"
The rich red stole up into the boy's face, mantling cheek and brow, and seeming to bring a glow even into the rough, tawny hair and yellow, curling lashes, as he dropped his eyes in a kind of happy shame. It was the first shame, perhaps, that he had ever been made to feel, and it was real shame, yet it was so mixed with wholesome admiration of the small, beautiful creature who had brought it upon him, that it left him unable to understand himself. So he grew redder, though there was no look of anger about him, and soon his habitual smile was growing again, although this time it was tinged with reverence and quite lacked its usual impudence.
The scholars marvelled at him as the new teacher left him with the brand of baby, sealed with her beautiful scorn.