I opened the case and took out a dear little gold wrist watch. I started to thank them, but choked utterly when I thought of the sacrifices it must have cost some of those people to help buy that watch.
But this was no time for tears. The main dish of the feast was being brought in. The chief of the County school commissioners, the guest of honor, rose pompously and made his way to the front after being ceremoniously introduced by Elijah Butts. After much clearing of the throat he began a flowery speech about the fame that had been gained throughout the county by the little schoolhouse at our Corners on account of its Red Cross activities and Patriotic Pageants; how it had been made the social center for the people all around and had helped educate them to better things; how the boys and girls had learned more useful things from me than from anyone else who had ever taught there; and how Miss Fairlee, who had come from the East to study rural school conditions in our section had been quite carried away with my work, and so on, ad infinitum.
Then, having loaded his cannon very carefully, so to speak, he proceeded to fire it into the crowd with telling effect. The County school commissioners, he announced with a fine air of jocularity, had heard that I was carrying the schoolhouse around with me wherever I went, and as they were afraid it might get mislaid some day they had voted to build a new brick schoolhouse on a foundation; one that couldn’t be moved. A new schoolhouse for our district! Nobody had ever dared hope for such a thing, not even in their wildest dreams. And it seems that I had precipitated all this good fortune!
Later on I happened to hear this same commissioner congratulating Elijah Butts on the good teacher he had picked, and Elijah swelled up like a pouter pigeon and replied:
“Yes, sir, I spotted her for a good one the minute I laid eyes on her. It was me that persuaded the Board to hire her when some of them was holdin’ back, favorin’ a different kind of female. Yessir, it was me that picked her!”
Justice, who had also overheard the conversation, winked solemnly and we both fled where we could have our laugh out unnoticed.
But the best part of it all came after the Big Show was over. Miss Fairlee came up and took me by the arm and strolled away with me.
“My dear,” she said, “would you consider leaving this place and coming East with me? I need an assistant in my Social Settlement work for the summer, and there’s no one I’ve met in the whole country that would fill the bill as well as you. For handling difficult situations you are a perfect marvel. Your talents are wasted out here—anyone can carry on the work that you have started so wonderfully. Won’t you please come?”
We talked about it a bit, and where do you suppose this Social Settlement is? Where but in the one spot on earth that I’d rather be than any other! The same city, my dears, that has the honor of being your home! It’s all settled now, and I am to go, after my visit to the Dalrymples. Mother is going into a big Sanitarium, and I am going to work with Miss Fairlee through the summer.
Clear the track! The Winnebago Special is about to start once more! O my Winnies, don’t you see the miracle of it all? Here I was, pining to live in a House by the Side of the Road, when all the time I was living in a House by the Side of the Road! It was my little despised schoolhouse. I was sent here by fate to prove myself worthy or unworthy of what she had in store for me. I was taken away from you that I might come back to a richer, fuller life than I had dreamed of in the old days. It is all part of a Plan, so big and wonderful that I lose my breath when I think of it. But whatever the Plan may turn out to be in the future, there’s only one thing about it that interests me now, and that is, I’m coming back to you. I’m coming back! Back to my Winnies! Hang out the latchstring and remove everything breakable, for the wanderer is coming home!