Cressy | Page 4

suddenly into stony fright on the edge of
an open arithmetic, touched the heart of the master so strongly by its
resemblance to some kept-in and forgotten scholar who had succumbed
over the task he could not accomplish, that he was seized with
compunction.
Recovering himself, and re-establishing, as it were, the decorous
discipline of the room by clapping his hands and saying "Sho!" he
passed up the narrow aisle of benches, replacing the forgotten
arithmetic, and picking up from the desks here and there certain
fragmentary pieces of plaster and crumbling wood that had fallen from
the ceiling, as if this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves
overnight. When he reached his own desk he lifted the lid and remained
for some moments motionless, gazing into it. His apparent meditation
however was simply the combined reflection of his own features in a
small pocket-mirror in its recesses and a perplexing doubt in his mind
whether the sacrifice of his budding moustache was not essential to the
professional austerity of his countenance. But he was presently aware
of the sound of small voices, light cries, and brief laughter scattered at
vague and remote distances from the schoolhouse--not unlike the birds
and squirrels he had just dispossessed. He recognized by these signs
that it was nine o'clock, and his scholars were assembling.
They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always
as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or
dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less
coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices
scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always
preoccupied by something else than the actual business on hand;
appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between
fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected places along the road after
vague and purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and
everywhere but to school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final
arrival that the master, who had a few moments before failed to descry
a single torn straw hat or ruined sun-bonnet above his visible horizon,

was always startled to find them suddenly under his windows, as if, like
the birds, they had alighted from the trees. Nor was their moral attitude
towards their duty any the more varied; they always arrived as if tired
and reluctant, with a doubting sulkiness that perhaps afterwards
beamed into a charming hypocrisy, but invariably temporizing with
their instincts until the last moment, and only relinquishing possible
truancy on the very threshold. Even after they were marshalled on their
usual benches they gazed at each other every morning with a perfectly
fresh astonishment and a daily recurring enjoyment of some hidden
joke in this tremendous rencontre.
It had been the habit of the master to utilize these preliminary
vagrancies of his little flock by inviting them on assembling to recount
any interesting incident of their journey hither; or failing this, from
their not infrequent shyness in expressing what had secretly interested
them, any event that had occurred within their knowledge since they
last met. He had done this, partly to give them time to recover
themselves in that more formal atmosphere, and partly, I fear, because,
notwithstanding his conscientious gravity, it greatly amused him. It
also diverted them from their usual round-eyed, breathless
contemplation of himself--a regular morning inspection which
generally embraced every detail of his dress and appearance, and made
every change or deviation the subject of whispered comment or stony
astonishment. He knew that they knew him more thoroughly than he
did himself, and shrank from the intuitive vision of these small
clairvoyants.
"Well?" said the master gravely.
There was the usual interval of bashful hesitation, verging on nervous
hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the last six months this question
by the master had been invariably received each morning as a veiled
pleasantry which might lead to baleful information or conceal some
query out of the dreadful books before him. Yet this very element of
danger had its fascinations. Johnny Filgee, a small boy, blushed
violently, and, without getting up, began hurriedly in a high key, "Tige
ith got," and then suddenly subsided into a whisper.

"Speak up, Johnny," said the master encouragingly.
"Please, sir, it ain't anythin' he's seed--nor any real news," said Rupert
Filgee, his elder brother, rising with family concern and frowning
openly upon Johnny; "it's jest his foolishness; he oughter be licked."
Finding himself unexpectedly on his feet, and apparently at the end of a
long speech, he colored also, and then said hurriedly, "Jimmy
Snyder--HE seed suthin'. Ask HIM!" and sat down--a recognized hero.
Every eye, including the master's, was turned on Jimmy Snyder. But
that youthful observer, instantly diving his head and shoulders into his
desk, remained there