The Desired Woman | Page 9

it when you didn't turn up at roll-call, I bound you," Webb
drawled. "Say, do you know a young gal like her ain't strong enough to
lick scholars as sound as they ought to be licked, and thar is some talk
about appointin' some able-bodied man that lives close about to step in

an' sort o' clean up two or three times a week. I don't know but what I'd
like the job. A feller that goes as nigh naked as you do would be a
blame good thing to practise on."
"Huh!" the boy sniffed, as he tossed back his shaggy brown hair. "You
talk mighty big. I'd like to see you try to whip me--I shore would."
"Well, I may give you the chance if Dolly calls on me to help 'er out,"
Webb laughed. "Say, I started to tell you a secret, but I won't."
"I already know what it is," George said, with a mischievous grin.
"You say you do?" Webb was caught in the wily fellow's snare.
"Yes, you are going to get married." The boy now burst into a roar of
laughter and threw himself back on the grass. "You and Sue Tidwell
are going to get spliced. The whole valley's talking about it, and hoping
that it will be public like an election barbecue. You with your red head
and freckled face and her with her stub nose and--"
"That will do--that will do!" Webb's frown seemed to deepen the flush
which, fold upon fold, came into his face. "Jokin' is all right, but it ain't
fair to bring in a lady's name."
"Oh no, of course not." The boy continued to laugh through the net
which he had drawn over him. "The shoe is on the other foot now."
"Well, I'm not goin' to tell you the news," Webb declared, with a touch
of propitiation in his voice; and, not a little discomfited, he turned away,
employing a quicker step than usually characterized his movement.
"The young scamp!" he said. "He's gittin' entirely too forward-- entirely,
for a boy as young as he is, and me his uncle."
Crossing a strip of meadow land, then picking his way between the
rows of a patch of corn, and skirting a cotton-field, he came out into a
red-clay road. Along this he walked till he reached a little meeting-
house snugly ensconced among big trees at the foot of the mountain.

The white frame building, oblong in shape, had four windows with
green outer blinds on each of its two sides, and a door at the end nearer
the road. As Webb traversed the open space, where, on Sundays, horses
were hitched to the trees and saplings, a drone as of countless bees fell
on his ears. To a native this needed no explanation. During five of the
week-days the building was used as a schoolhouse. The sound was
made by the students studying aloud, and John's niece, Dolly Drake,
had sole charge of them.
Reaching the door and holding his hat in his hand, Webb cautiously
peered within, beholding row after row of boys and girls whose backs
were turned to him. At a blackboard on the platform, a bit of chalk in
her fingers, Dolly, a girl eighteen years of age, stood explaining an
example in arithmetic to several burly boys taller than herself. Webb
glanced up at the sun.
"They haven't had recess yet," he reckoned. "I swear I'm sorry for them
boys. I'd rather take a dozen lickin's than to stay in on a day like this an'
try to git lessons in my head. I don't blame George a bit, so I don't. I
can't recall a thing in the Saviour's teachin's about havin' to study
figures an' geography, nohow. Looks to me like the older the world gits
the further it gits from common sense."
Patiently Webb held his ground till Dolly had dismissed the class; then,
turning to a table on which stood a cumbersome brass bell, she said:
"I'm going to let you have recess, but you've got to go out quietly."
She had not ceased speaking, and had scarcely touched the handle of
the bell, when there was a deafening clatter of books and slates on the
crude benches. Feet shod and feet bare pounded the floor. Merry yells
rent the air. On the platform itself two of the arithmetic delinquents
were boxing playfully, fiercely punching, thrusting, and dodging. At a
window three boys were bodily ejecting a fourth, the legs and feet of
whom, like a human letter V, were seen disappearing over the sill.
Smilingly Webb stood aside and let the clamoring drove hurtle past to
the playground outside, and when the way was clear he entered the
church and stalked up the single aisle