Mr. Tayloe addressed the school: "This girl has disobeyed me. She has tried to cheat me. She has lied outright. She also, as I believe, tore up her report to keep from showing it at home. She will stand for an hour on the dunce-stool with the dunce-cap on her head. She will not leave the school-room at play-time. She will stay after school for an hour for three days, and do, each day, a sum in long division as long as that her father did last night. The other girls to whom I gave the sum have had the honesty to confess that they could not do it. They will not be punished. They have neither cheated nor lied."
If the child had been as guilty as he said, the punishment would have been extreme. Some of the girls cried silently behind their books; the boys exchanged savage looks in the shelter of slates and atlases. Nobody was amused by the grotesque figure mounted upon a tall stool by Mr. Tayloe, and facing the school, a conical paper cap upon her head. Something in the livid, set face that gazed over and beyond their heads with blank, unseeing eyes, appalled the most thoughtless.
Bea shed becoming tears, and was pitied by all for her sister's misconduct. Dee got a terrible flogging for sulking and disrespect. When called up to recite, he stood with locked jaws and clinched fists, and would not answer a single question. Flea cast an agonized glance at the loyal little rebel as the blows fell thick and fast and his jaws were not unlocked. He would die under the lash, she knew, sooner than cry out now that his blood was up. She had the same in her veins, and she had not shed a tear.
It was a field-day long to be remembered in the history of the Tayloe reign. More lessons were missed through stupidity or lack of study than upon any previous day. During Flea's hour upon the dunce-stool Snail Snead and Tom Carter were thrashed, Emma Jones had a taste of the ruler upon her palm, and six girls were in tears from the sarcastic scoldings dealt out to them. There was no romping or jollity upon the play-ground when Mr. Tayloe went home for his luncheon, and little appetite for the "snacks" brought from home. One and all, the children had been forbidden to speak to Flea, left solitary on the front bench, but Dee sat on the floor at her feet, his head against her knee, like an ailing, devoted puppy.
The hour rolled heavily by, and the afternoon session began. Every lesson recited by Flea during that horrible session was without a flaw. It was not in child-flesh to feign cheerfulness or to appear indifferent. She looked obstinate and sullen. She was mad (in the Virginia sense of the word) through and through. Yet her brain did its work well. She had passed the red-hot stage of temper, and was now at the white heat that often makes the mind abnormally clear.
Two other children had been condemned to stay in, but their lessons were despatched in ten minutes, and Mr. Tayloe and Flea had the school-house to themselves. His watch was laid, as usual, upon the desk, and he glanced at it frequently while writing his letters. Flea busied herself with the sum he had written out for her, the identical sum she had done last night, and, therefore, easy work.
"Have you done it?" asked the teacher, as her pencil ceased its scratching.
"Yes, sir."
"Bring it here!" As he took it he said, rudely, "Go to the spring and bring me a bucket of water."