“Hum, so he does,” grunted Mr. Stagg. “He’s ’most always in mourning for somebody or something. I tell him his name ought to be Jeremiah instead of ‘Sweet Afton,’” which comment was, of course, lost on Carolyn May. But she said seriously:
“Do you s’pose, Uncle Joe, that he looks up enough? It does just seem to me as though poor Mr. Driggs must always be looking down instead of looking up to see the sunshine and the blue sky and—and the mountains, like my papa said you should.”
Uncle Joe was silent. Aunty Rose said, very briskly for her:
“And your papa was right, Car’lyn May. He was a very sensible man, I have no doubt.”
“Oh, he was quite a wonderful man,” said the little girl with full assurance.
It was on the following morning that school opened. The Corners district school was a red building, with a squatty bell tower and two front doors, standing not far up the road beyond the church. Carolyn May thought it a very odd-looking schoolhouse indeed.
The school she had attended in New York was a big brick-and-stone building, with wide corridors, well-ventilated rooms, a lovely basement gymnasium, a great hall, a roof garden in summer, part of which was enclosed with glass and steam-heated in winter.
Inside the little red schoolhouse were only rows of desks and “forms”—all marred, knife-marked, and ink-stained. The initials of the very “oldest inhabitant” of The Corners, Mr. Jackson Sprague, were carved in the lid of one desk. And the system of education followed in this school seemed to be now much what it had been in Mr. Sprague’s day.
Miss Minnie Lester taught the school, and although Miss Minnie looked very sharply through her glasses at one, Carolyn May thought she was going to love the teacher very much.
Indeed, that was Carolyn May’s attitude towards almost everybody whom she met. She expected to love and to be loved. Was it any wonder she made so many friends?