I felt strangely overcome at this astounding speech, by an indescribable mixture of tender solicitude for her welfare, and horror at her fearful mistake; but I reproved her for jesting at the vice of drinking.
"Vice!" said she, with a bubbling laugh. "Why, down home we-all regyahd it as an accomplishment! But Ah reckon you ah jokin' about teachin' it. Youah jokes and use of the lettah 'ah' ah things Ah shall nevah get used to, Ah'm afraid; but Ah'm glad you don't mean that about the drinkin'."
Despairing of making her understand, I left her, again conscious of being under occult and abnormal control. I was astonished to see in the school several large boys who must have been greatly needed in the fields. They looked at each other sheepishly as I came in, but most of the time they gazed at the teacher, rather than at their books. Not having the gift of prophecy, I could not see in their presence the cloud that would soon overshadow my official life. I took their attendance as proof of the popularity of the school. I studied the philosophers, and sought calm of spirit. Learning from Epictetus that the earthen pitcher and the rock do not agree, and from Lubbock that love at first sight is thought by great minds actually to occur, I reëxamined my abnormal psychic symptoms in Miss Frayn's presence, and prudently refrained from seeking her society. Poise alone makes possible a consistent career, and this I had in large measure reconquered, when, like a bolt from the blue—or at least with much abruptness—into my quiet office burst a committee from the Teal Lake Township School Board, accompanied by a number of patrons of the Boggs school—all old neighbors of ours—headed by the defeated Mr. Elizur Middlekauff. This could mean but one thing—Miss Frayn! The rebel invasion was at the door.
"Mr. Middlekauff," said one, "is the spokesman."
"We've got a grievyance," said Mr. Middlekauff, "a whale of a grievyance in our deestrict; and we've come right to the power-house to fix it."
"It shall command my most careful consideration," said I. "Please state the case."
"That 'ere railroad wreck," said Mr. Middlekauff, who was a very forcible speaker at caucuses, "let loose on our people a scourge in caliker more pestilential than the Huns and Vandals. We come to you as clothed with a little brief authority, an' accessory after the fact to this scourge business."
"I fail," said I, "to catch your meaning."
"I mean," said he, growing loud, "that peaches-an'-cream invader from the states lately in rebellion that you've give a stiffkit, an' your brother Chet by stratagems an' spiles has got himself elected an' put into our school. That's what I mean!"
"I infer," said I, "some implied strictures upon the character or school management or educational qualifications of Miss Roberta Lee Frayn."