Cressy | Page 5

gurgling as if under water. Two or three nearest
him endeavored with some struggling to bring him to an intelligible
surface again. The master waited patiently. Johnny Filgee took
advantage of the diversion to begin again in a high key, "Tige ith got
thix," and subsided.
"Come, Jimmy," said the master, with a touch of peremptoriness. Thus
adjured, Jimmy Snyder came up glowingly, and bristling with full stops
and exclamation points. "Seed a black b'ar comin' outer Daves' woods,"
he said excitedly. "Nigh to me ez you be. 'N big ez a hoss; 'n snarlin'! 'n
snappin'!--like gosh! Kem along--ker-- clump torords me. Reckoned
he'd skeer me! Didn't skeer me worth a cent. I heaved a rock at him--I
did now!" (in defiance of murmurs of derisive comment)--"'n he slid.
Ef he'd kem up furder I'd hev up with my slate and swotted him over
the snoot--bet your boots!"
The master here thought fit to interfere, and gravely point out that the
habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school- slate was
equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of
Tuolumne County) and to the striker; and that the verb "to swot" and
the noun substantive "snoot" were likewise indefensible, and not to be
tolerated. Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith
in his own courage, sat down.
A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking advantage of it,
opened in a higher key, "Tige ith"--but the master's attention was here
diverted by the searching eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of eleven, who

after the fashion of her sex preferred a personal recognition of her
presence before she spoke. Succeeding in catching his eye, she threw
back her long hair from her shoulders with an easy habitual gesture,
rose, and with a faint accession of color said:
"Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. McKinstry told
mother she's comin' back here to school."
The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsistent with his
cynical austerity. Seeing the young girl curiously watching him with an
expectant smile, he regretted it. Cressy McKinstry, who was sixteen
years old, had been one of the pupils he had found at the school when
he first came. But as he had also found that she was there in the
extraordinary attitude of being "engaged" to one Seth Davis, a
fellow-pupil of nineteen, and as most of the courtship was carried on
freely and unceremoniously during school- hours with the full
permission of the master's predecessor, the master had been obliged to
point out to the parents of the devoted couple the embarrassing effects
of this association on the discipline of the school. The result had been
the withdrawal of the lovers, and possibly the good-will of the parents.
The return of the young lady was consequently a matter of some
significance. Had the master's protest been accepted, or had the
engagement itself been broken off?
Either was not improbable. His momentary loss of attention was
Johnny Filgee's great gain.
"Tige," said Johnny, with sudden and alarming distinctness, "ith got
thix pupths--mothly yaller."
In the laugh which followed this long withheld announcement of an
increase in the family of Johnny's yellow and disreputable setter
"Tiger," who usually accompanied him to school and howled outside,
the master joined with marked distinctness. Then he said, with equally
marked severity, "Books!" The little levee was ended, and school
began.
It continued for two hours with short sighs, corrugations of small

foreheads, the complaining cries and scratchings of slate pencils over
slates, and other signs of minor anguish among the more youthful of
the flock; and with more or less whisperings, movements of the lips,
and unconscious soliloquy among the older pupils. The master moved
slowly up and down the aisle with a word of encouragement or
explanation here and there, stopping with his hands behind him to gaze
abstractedly out of the windows to the wondering envy of the little ones.
A faint hum, as of invisible insects, gradually pervaded the school; the
more persistent droning of a large bee had become dangerously
soporific. The hot breath of the pines without had invaded the doors
and windows; the warped shingles and weather-boarding at times
creaked and snapped under the rays of the vertical and unclouded sun.
A gentle perspiration broke out like a mild epidemic in the infant class;
little curls became damp, brief lashes limp, round eyes moist, and small
eyelids heavy. The master himself started, and awoke out of a perilous
dream of other eyes and hair to collect himself severely. For the
irresolute, half-embarrassed, half-lazy figure of a man had halted
doubtingly before the porch and open door. Luckily the children, who
were facing the master with their backs to the entrance, did not see it.
Yet