"Oh to let people know he's there, you know; did you never see
Father Swaim?"
"No."
"La! he's the funniest old fellow! He goes round and round the country, carrying the news-papers; and we get him to bring our letters from the post-office, when there are any. He carries 'em in a pair of saddle-bags hanging across that old white horse of his I don't think that horse will ever grow old, no more than his master; and in summer he has a stick so long with a horse's tail tied to the end of it, to brush away the flies, for the poor horse has had his tail cut off pretty short. I wonder if it isn't the very same," said Jenny, laughing heartily: "Father Swaim thought he could manage it best, I guess."
"But what was it that happened to you that time at school?" said Ellen.
"Why, when we heard the horn blow, our master the schoolmaster, you know went out to get a paper; and I was tired with sitting still, so I jumped up, and ran across the room and then back again, and over and back again, five or six times; and when he came in, one of the girls up and told of it. It was Fanny Lawson," said Jenny, in a whisper to Alice, "and I think she ain't much different now from what she was then. I can hear her now 'Mr. Starks, Jenny Hitchcock's been running all around the room.' Well, what do you think he did to me? He took hold of my two hands, and swung me round and round by the arms, till I didn't know which was head and which was feet."
"What a queer schoolmaster!" said Ellen.
"Queer enough; you may say that. His name was Starks; the boys used to call him Starksification. We did hate him, that's a fact. I'll tell you what he did to a black boy of ours you know our black Sam, Alice? I forget what he had been doing; but Starks took him so by the rims of the ears and danced him up and down upon the floor."
"But didn't that hurt him?"
"Hurt him! I guess it did, he meant it should. He tied me under the table once. Sometime, when he wanted to punish two boys at a time, he would set them to spit in each other's faces."
"Oh! don't tell me about him!" cried Ellen, with a face of horror: "I don't like to hear it."