When, after the lapse of some thirty minutes or so, the stentorian voice of Mrs. Yellett recalled Mary to camp, she found that the tin breakfast service had been washed and returned to the mess-box, the beds had been neatly folded and piled in one of the wagons—in fact, the extremely simple tent-hold, to coin a word, was in absolute order. It was just 6 A.M., and Mrs. Yellett thought it high time to begin school. Mary tried to convey to her that the hour was somewhat unusual, but she seemed to think that for pupils who were beginning their tasks comparatively late in life it would be impossible to start sufficiently early in the morning. So at this young and tender hour, with many misgivings, Mary set about preparing her al fresco class-room.
She chose a nice, flat little piece of the United States, situated in the shade of the clump of willows that bordered a trickling creek not far from her sylvan bath-room of the early morning. How she was to sit on the ground all day and yet preserve a properly pedagogical demeanor was the first question to be settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as “paw” was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and “paw,” by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual acumen, grasped the situation.
“I’m figgerin’,” she commented, “that there must be easier ways of governin’ than sittin’ up like a prairie-dog while you’re at it.”
Mrs. Yellett took a hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, the mission of a desk. Mrs. Yellett was genuinely depressed. Had she imported the magician without his wand—Aladdin without his lamp? She proposed a bewildering choice—an inverted wash-tub, two buckets sustaining the relation of caryatides to a board, the sheet-iron cooking-stove. In an excess of solicitude she even suggested robbing “paw” of his soap-box.
Mary chose the wash-tub on condition that Mrs. Yellett consented to sacrifice the handles in the cause of lower education. She felt that an inverted tub that was likely to see-saw during class hours would tend rather to develop a sense of humor in her pupils than to contribute to her pedagogical dignity.
The camp, as may already have been inferred, enjoyed a matriarchal form of government. Its feminine dictator was no exception to the race of autocrats in that she was not an absolute stranger to the rosy byways of self-indulgence. There was a strenuous quality in her pleasuring perhaps not inconsistent in one whose daily tasks included sheep-herding, ditch-digging, varied by irrigating and shearing in their proper seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the skull of “Alas, poor Yorick!”
“This,” she observed, “is the only thing about camp that reminds me I’m a woman. I’d plumb forget it many a time if it warn’t for this little tub. The identity of a woman is mighty apt to get mislaid when dooty compels her to assoome the pants cast aside by the nacheral head of the house in sickness or death. It’s ben six years now since paw’s done a thing but set ’round and wait for meals.” Mrs. Yellett sighed laboriously. “Not that I’m holdin’ it agin him none. When a man sees eighty, it’s time he bedded himself down comfortable and waited for the nacheral course of events to weed him out. But when the boys get old enough to tend to herdin’, irrigatin’, and the work that God A’mighty provided that man might get the chance to sweat hisself for bread, accordin’ to the Scriptures, I aim to indulge myself by doin’ a wash of clothes every day, even if I have to take clean clothes and do ’em over again.”
The poor “gov’ment’s” tender heart could not resist this presentation of the case.
“We won’t touch the handles, Mrs. Yellett,” she laughed. “I’m glad you told me you had a personal sentiment for the tub. There are some things I should feel the same way about—my hoe and rake, for instance, that I care for my garden with, at home. And that suggests to me, why not dig two little trenches for the handles and plant the tub? Then I shall have an even firmer foundation on which to arrange the—the—the educational miscellany.”
The suggestion of this harmless expedient was gratefully received, and the “desk” duly implanted, whereupon Mary pathetically sought to embellish her “class-room” from such scanty materials as happened to be at hand. A hemstitched bureau scarf that she had tucked in her trunk, in unquestioning faith in the bureau that was to be part of the ranch equipment, took the “raw edge,” as it were, off the desk. A bunch of prairie flowers, flaming cactus blossoms in scarlet and yellow, ox-eyed daisies, white clematis from the creek, seemed none the less decorative for the tin cup that held them. Mary grimly told herself that her school was to have refining influences, even if it had no furniture.