"I'll tell mother not to put cold batter-bread into my snack to-morrow," she resolved.
At the thought a home picture arose in her mind. Of her mother, with tired eyes and wrinkled forehead, the baby tugging at her skirts and whining to be taken up, while the busy housewife stood at the dining-room table, cutting ham and buttering bread, and selecting the nicest ginger-cakes for her daughters' midday meal. She had forgotten nothing, not even the clean napkin, although Calley was teasing her on one side and baby on the other, and Dee was asking everybody where he could have put his slate, and Chaney was waiting, a wooden bread-tray on her hip, for "Mistis to give out dinner." Flea concluded that she had a good mother. If she did scold sometimes, she had reason enough for it, and Flea at least, whatever might be said of the other children, richly deserved all the fault-finding she got at home. Her mother had said to herself when she cut and buttered that slice of batter-bread,
"How my hungry little girl will enjoy this at play-time!"
And the ungrateful little wretch had thrown it away.
The Flea Grigsby who ten minutes ago was planning revenge and even murder got up meekly, crept under the hazel and sweet-gum bushes, picked up the despised chunk, carried it back to her seat at the foot of a hickory-tree, and proceeded to eat it. Every mouthful went against palate and stomach. The butter had soaked into it and left it clammy. The sand stuck to it, and Flea could not brush it quite clean. The gritty morsels set her teeth on edge, and reminded her of stories she had read of penances done for sins committed—hair-cloth shirts, and peas in one's shoes, and floggings upon the naked shoulders, and all that. The stories helped her to persevere until the last crumb was swallowed. The task was further lightened by meditation upon her mother's many sterling virtues. For instance, how she took especial pains to give the children who went to school something to eat that was a little better than the children left at home would have. She said "studying was hungry work."
In reality Mrs. Grigsby had said, "stedyin' is mighty hongry work." Flea would not think of that or other peculiarities that had sometimes made her ashamed of her mother. Her mother was not to blame that her parents had not sent her to school for as many years as she meant to send her children.
At this point of her musings something bitter and burning arose in the girl's softened heart.
"Poor mother!" she muttered. "Wouldn't she be mad if she knew what has happened to-day? As for father, he'd be ready to mash him like he did the moccasin."
The rule quoted as "a good law" by Major Duncombe, never to tell tales out of school, was one of the first lessons learned by every boy and girl of that school. Traditions of awful floggings administered by former teachers for violations of the rule were familiar to all. A large majority of parents were in the league with the schoolmasters in this matter. Many fathers not only refused to listen to their children's complaints, but punished them for bringing them. Boys actually carried for weeks the marks of the whip, and took pains to hide them from their parents lest they might be obliged to tell how they got them. A tell-tale was despised everywhere. To tell tales out of school branded boy or girl as for a disgraceful crime.
If Flea had battles to fight, she must fight them single-handed. The authority of the Old Field schoolmaster was what she had learned in Olney's geography to call "absolute despotism."