When little Tobe, glad of the enforced return to the liberties of his begging days, brought home his soiled first reader and told his father that the teacher had sent him from school with orders not to return until he could learn to keep his face clean, the father became swollen with an overflowing wrath. He swore frightfully, and started off, vowing that he would “show the white-faced foundling how to treat decent people's children.”
And he had two tall drinks of whiskey put on the slate against him at Couch's and proceeded to carry out his threat.
It was a cold day in December. Pilling, the teacher, sat near the stove in the little square school-room, listening to the irrepressible hum of his restless pupils and the predominating monotonous sound of a small girl's voice reciting multiplication tables.
“Three times three are nine,” she whined, drawlingly; “three times four are twelve, three times—”
The little girl with the braided hair stopped short. A loud knock fell upon the door.
A boy looked through the window, evidently saw the one who had knocked, then cast a curious look at Pilling, the teacher. Pilling observed this, and asked the boy:
“Who is it?”
After a moment of hesitation, the boy replied:
“It's old Patchy—I mean, Tobe McStenger's father.”
Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women, had the utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door and locked it.