“She's teacher, that's who she is!”
The captain was astonished.
“No!” he exclaimed. “Phoebe Dawes? You don't say so! Well, well!”
“Yes, sir. When I went into school and found her sitting there I was so surprised I didn't know what to do. She knew me, too, and said good morning, and was I all right again and was my dress really as bad as it looked to be? I told her that Georgianna thought she could fix it, and if she couldn't, her sister could. She said that was nice, and then 'twas time for school to begin.”
“Did she say anything about me?” inquired Captain Cy when they were seated at the dinner table.
“Oh, yes! I forgot. She must have found out who you are, 'cause she said she was surprised that a man who had made his money out of hides should have been so careless about the creatures that wore 'em.”
“Humph! How'd she get along with the young ones in school?”
It appeared that she had gotten along very well with them. Some of the bigger boys in the back seats, cherishing pleasant memories of the “fun” they had under Miss Seabury's easy-going rule, attempted to repeat their performances of the previous term. But the very first “spitball” which spattered upon the blackboard proved a disastrous missile for its thrower.
“She made him clean the board,” proclaimed Bos'n, big-eyed and awestruck, “and then he had to stand in the corner. He was Bennie Edwards, and he's most thirteen. Miss Seabury, they said, couldn't do anything with him, but teacher said 'Go,' as quiet as could be and just looked at him, and he went. And he's most as tall as she is. He did look so silly!”
The Edwards youth was not the only one who was made to “look silly” by little Miss Dawes during the first days of her stay in Bayport. She dealt with the unruly members of her classes as bravely as she had faced the Cahoon cow, and the results were just as satisfactory. She was strict, but she was impartial, and Alicia Atkins found, to her great surprise, that the daughter of a congressman was expected to study as faithfully and behave herself as well as freckled-faced Noah Hamlin, whose father peddled fish and whose everyday costume was a checkered “jumper” and patched overalls.