CHAPTER V.
Every hour of that black Monday cast Flea into deeper darkness. Because she was found wanting in arithmetic she was put, in all her classes, with girls whose ignorance she despised. For two years she had studied the same lessons with Bea, and recited them as well. Yet Bea smiled sweetly down upon her from the head of the "big girls'" bench, and Flea swelled with angry mortification between Lucy Wilson, who could not read to herself without whispering the words, and Emma Jones, whose recitation of, "Vermont is a small ro-mantick and pictures-quee State," was one of last session's jokes. At "play-time" Mr. Tayloe went to Greenfield, less than half a mile distant, for a comfortable luncheon. As soon as he was out of sight every tongue was loosened. The boys whooped and raced to and fro; the girls knotted together in groups under the trees and upon the steps to eat their snacks and discuss the incidents of the morning.
Flea slipped away unperceived, luncheon-bag in hand, to the welcome cover of the woods. She thought she was glad that nobody stopped or stayed her. Really the indifference of her mates to what she had endured and what she now suffered pierced her with a new sorrow.
"Nobody cares! nobody cares!" she cried aloud, plunging into the forest until the voices of the shouting boys could not be heard. She was alone at last. Casting herself down in the friendly shade, she let all the waves of wounded feeling, the billows of wounded pride, go over her head.
Up to this morning she had been a happy child, making much of her few and simple pleasures. She liked everybody she knew in her small world, and loved nearly everybody. She had never been guilty of a wilful unkindness; hatred and revenge were unknown passions. The unpleasant smile that curved the schoolmaster's lips so far upward as partly to close his eyes would have straightened into a laugh of genuine amusement had he watched, from behind the tree-boles, the look that settled upon the face, blotched with weeping when, by-and-by, the girl sat up, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms gripping her legs. She had cried her eyes dry. She believed that she could never cry again—certainly not in that man's presence. No! not if he were to beat her to death!
"If he ever strikes me I will kill him!" she muttered, her lips curling back from the locked teeth. "It would be as right as father's killing that snake. I hope I shall have a chance to pay him back some day. I am in his power now, but a time may come! A time may come!"
She was genuinely miserable, yet she could not help being melodramatic. She was still living in her story, but the complexion of the story was changed. Yesterday she would not have harmed the meanest thing that lived. This morning to make and to see others happy was the purest joy she knew. Her heart seemed to this dreadful day to have been a placid pool, clear because it had never been stirred up from the bottom. This man—the first creature she had ever hated—had brought to the top such mire and dirt as she had never dreamed were there.
By-and-by she ate her luncheon. She was only a child, and with childhood the sharpest edge of the sharpest grief is soon dulled. When her hunger was somewhat appeased she became critical of the remnants of her "snack."
"Cold batter-bread!" turning it over with the tips of her fingers. "I wonder who mother thinks cares for cold batter-bread?"
Batter-bread is a mixture of Indian meal, milk, and eggs beaten light and baked in a mould. When hot and fresh it is puffy and delicious. In cooling it becomes heavy and sticky. Flea's misery was settling into crossness, very much after the fashion of the bread. She took one bite out of the solid chunk, and tossed the rest as far as she could send it over the bushes. It was aimed at the creek that flowed a dozen yards away, but fell short and landed in the sand. Flea could see it lying there while she crunched a crisp ginger-cake with teeth that snapped pettishly upon it.