Sherm gathered up her books with a laugh. “Come on, your mother wants you.”
“She does not–and I’m going to sit here till I make a grass basket for Jilly.”
September and October slipped away quietly, their warm, hazy days gay with turning leaves and spicily fragrant with the drying vegetation and ripening 287fruits. Chicken Little found school under Mr. Clay unwontedly interesting. He departed from the regulation mixture of three parts study and one part recitation and tried to lead his pupils’ thoughts out into the world a little. Indeed, some of his innovations were regarded with suspicion by certain fathers and mothers in the district. When he advised his advanced history class to read historical novels and Shakespeare in connection with their work, there was much shaking of heads. But when he took advantage of the coming election to waken an interest in politics, the district board waited on him. If the visit of the school board silenced Mr. Clay, it did not discourage his charges, and partisanship ran high. The favorite method of boosting one’s candidates being to write their names on the blackboard at recesses and noons, and then stand guard to prevent the opposing faction from erasing them.
The fun grew furious. The Mortons were staunch Republicans, and Chicken Little strove valiantly to write “Garfield and Arthur” earlier and oftener than the Democrats, led by Grant Stowe and Mamie Price, could replace them with “Hancock and English.”
Grant was the biggest and strongest and bossiest lad in school. His favorite method of settling the enemy was to pick them up bodily and set them outside the schoolhouse door while he rubbed out their 288ticket. Or better still, to hold the door while Mamie or some other democrat turned the entire front board into a waving sea of “Hancocks and Englishes.”
The Republicans were in the lead as to numbers, but they were mostly the younger children. But few of the older boys could be spared from the farm work to enter school so early in the fall. So Chicken Little captained her side, aided by quiet suggestions from Mr. Clay who did not wish to take sides openly.
Many were the ruses employed to capture the blackboards. Jane stayed one evening after school to have things ready for the morrow, but, alas, Grant Stowe was in the habit of waiting to walk a piece home with her. He waited down the road till he grew suspicious, and, coming back, caught her in the act.
He took swift revenge, none too generously, by forcing her to erase every line, then rubbed it in by guiding her hand to make her write the names of the opposition candidates. Despite all Chicken Little’s struggles, he persisted until the hated names were finished in writing that decidedly resembled crow tracks, but could be read by anyone having sufficient patience.
Chicken Little was furious but helpless. Mr. Clay had gone home early in order to drive into town 289that evening. Grant treated her anger as a good joke. She finally wrenched her hand loose and gave him a resounding smack across the cheek, that made her tormentor’s face tingle.