JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY
The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken off into the apron of Miss Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as the very smallest and least bloomy of all the plums on the tree; but there is something which tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having received the votes of the people for any office, especially in a region of high average civilization, covering six hundred or seven hundred square miles of good American domain. Jennie was a sensible country girl. Being sensible, she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel some little sense of increased importance as she drove her father’s little one-cylinder runabout over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December weather, just before Christmas.
The weather itself was stimulating, and she was making rapid progress in the management of the little car which her father had offered to lend her for use in visiting the one hundred or more rural schools soon to come under her supervision. She rather fancied the picture of herself, clothed in more or less authority and queening it over her little army of teachers.
Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically conscious that she made rather an agreeable picture, as she stopped her car alongside his top buggy to talk with him. She had bright blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled at him ingratiatingly.
“Don’t you think father is lovely?” said she. “He is going to let me use the runabout when I visit the schools.”
“That will be good,” said Haakon. “It will save you lots of time. I hope you make the county pay for the gasoline.”
“I haven’t thought about that,” said Jennie. “Everybody’s been so nice to me—I want to give as well as receive.”
“Why,” said Haakon, “you will yust begin to receive when your salary begins in Yanuary.”
“Oh, no!” said Jennie. “I’ve received much more than that now! You don’t know how proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew before, and all my old friends like you working for me in the convention and at the polls, just as if I amounted to something.”
“And you don’t know how proud I feel,” said Haakon, “to have in county office a little girl I used to hold on my lap.”