“So one Saturday in October, armed with brooms and buckets, window cloths and scrubbing brushes and a can of soft soap, we set out to clean the schoolhouse. We scrubbed the floor and the desks and polished the stove and cleaned the windows, and on the next Monday, the date set for the opening of all the schools in the district, sister Belle took her place at the teacher’s old desk.
“It wasn’t a very different opening from the one she had planned and looked forward to so eagerly. The only difference was that there would be no payment for Belle at the end of the term.
“The last pupil to start in was Joe Slater. He was a tall, strong boy of seventeen, but was not considered very bright. He was a fine hand to work, though, and from ploughing time in the spring until the corn husking was over in the fall, he was always busy. During the winter months he did odd jobs and went to school, but he had never got beyond the first-reader class. Because he had nothing to do he had always been more or less troublesome in school, and the very first day he came he threw paper wads and whispered and teased the younger children.
“Belle found that he knew the first reader ‘by heart.’ More to encourage Joe than for any other reason, she promoted him to the second reader. It was hard to tell whether pupil or teacher was the most astonished to find that Joe was actually learning to read. Belle helped him before and after school, and Joe became a model pupil and refused to do any work that would make him miss a day of school. He always came early in the morning and had the fire going and wood enough in for all day by the time Belle got there.
“So Belle was surprised to find Joe’s seat empty one snowy morning in December. His sister Nancy said he had gone to the railroad in a sled to get some freight for Mr. Grove. They lived on Mr. Grove’s place, and Joe could not well refuse to do this for him. Nancy did say, though, that Joe had wanted to wait until Saturday, but Mr. Grove was afraid the sledding snow would go off before that time. So Joe had started long before daylight, hoping to get back to school in time for the afternoon session.
On the steps a big man was stamping his feet and shaking the snow from a fur-collared great-coat
“About half-past eleven there was a loud knock on the door. It was snowing and blowing, and we all turned around to look when Belle went to open the door. On the steps a big man in a fur cap was stamping his feet and shaking the snow from a fur-collared great-coat. Belle said afterward that she knew him instantly—it was the new county superintendent—but she couldn’t imagine why he had come. She had seen him at institute in Clayville, but none of us children had ever seen him before.
“Belle soon found from his talk that he thought he was in the Cherry Flat school. When she told him where he was and the peculiar circumstances of our school, he was very much surprised.
“‘Why, I can’t understand it at all,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the station agent this morning, asking how to get to Cherry Flat school, and a boy who was warming himself at the stove spoke up and offered to take me there. He was on a sled and of course I jumped at the chance. He let me out at the forks of the road, and here I am, three miles from the Cherry Flat school, you say.’