“Mr. Brierly apologized to Father, and Mrs. Brierly and Mother kissed the next time they met, and Tom and Annie began waiting for Charlie and me again, so that everything was all right once more.
“Get the apples, Bobby, please, and tomorrow night, if you say your prayers and go right to sleep tonight, I’ll tell you about—well, it’s an awfully good story I have for tomorrow night.”
BRAIN AGAINST BRAWN
Bobby was feeling his muscle and telling his sisters how strong he wanted to be, and Grandma, hearing him, said, “Of course it’s nice to be strong, Bobby, but strength won’t get anyone very far unless it is combined with brains. I knew a delicate looking boy once who got ahead of half a dozen big strong fellows, not because he was strong, but because he had brains and used them.
“It was long, long ago—the winter my brother Truman taught our home school. Mother didn’t want Truman to take the school, for, though he was eighteen years old, he was a slender, little fellow and his blue eyes and light hair made him look even younger than he really was. But Father said for him to go ahead and see what he could do.
“There were several bad boys in school. The year before they had run the teacher out before the term was half over, and we had no more school that winter. When they heard that Truman was going to teach, they made all sorts of boasts about what they meant to do.
“Truman got along all right the first few weeks until the older boys, who had been working at a sawmill, started in. Nearly all of these boys were bigger than Truman, and Bud McGill, the leader, was a year older. He had broken up several schools and bragged that he would run Truman out in short order.
“From the day he started he did everything he could to make trouble. Because he had started to school late in the term he did not get the seat he wanted. One morning he came early and took this seat and refused to give it up when Truman asked him to. Truman couldn’t force him to give it up, because Bud was so much larger and stronger. All day long Bud sat there in the corner seat talking and laughing and throwing paper wads at girls—disturbing all the rest of us so we could not study. At dismissing time Truman told him to take his books with him and not come back to school until he could behave himself, but Bud walked out as bold as you please without a single book.