There it was the governor lived. There the soldiers went to enter the army, she remembered hearing the neighbors say, and her father's weekly paper was printed there. It was a great thing to have come from so far away and from Madison, and Rose hung about the door of the school house at the close of the first day, hoping the teacher would permit her to walk home by her side.
The young teacher, worried almost to despair over the arrangement of her classes, did not rise from her desk until the sun was low, rolling upon the tree-fringed ridge of the western bluff.
She was deeply touched to find this dusky-complexioned, bare-legged girl waiting for her.
"It was very nice of you, Rose," she said, and they walked off together. She talked about the flowers in the grass, and Rose ran to and fro, climbing fences to pick all sorts that she knew. She did not laugh when the teacher told her the botanical names. She wished she could remember them.
"When you grow up you can study botany too. But you must run home now, it's almost dark."
"I ain't afraid of the dark," said Rose stoutly, and she went so far Miss Lavalle was quite alarmed.
"Now you must go."
She kissed the child good-bye, and Rose ran off with her heart big with emotion, like an accepted lover.
It was well Rose turned to her for help, for most of her teachers had not the refinement of Miss Lavalle. They were generally farmers' daughters or girls from neighboring towns, who taught for a little extra money to buy dresses with—worthy girls indeed, but they expressed less of refining thought to the children.
One day this young teacher, with Rose and two or three other little ones, was sitting on a sunny southward sloping swell. Her hands were full of flowers and her great dark eyes were opened wide as if to mirror the whole scene, a valley flooded with light and warm with the radiant grass of spring. She was small and dark and dainty, and still carried the emotional characteristics of her French ancestry. She saw nature definitely, and did not scruple to say so.