Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/154

140 the end of the long recitation-bench, kicked her white crossed feet back and forth in a mild contempt unknown to any save herself.

The teacher came to her at last with his questions, and she leaned forward expectantly.

There were five robins sitting on a—telegraph-wire, and a—sportsman passed by and shot two: how many remained?

"Not any," the little girl said.

A dozen sunburnt little hands waved in the air. It was a delicious excitement to hear Melissa Dean miss. The teacher read over the question to himself to be certain that she had. "Next!" he said, sharply.

The light in Melissa's eyes shot straight into his slate-colored orbs. "The rest of 'em would 'a' flew," she said, soberly.

"How many would 'a' flew ?" he asked, in some heat.

"Three." She began to swing her feet again.

As she returned to her seat when the recitation was over, she caught up a large geography from under a pile of books lying on the end of a bench, and retreating with it to the farthest and darkest corner of the unceiled room, sat there in a trance of bliss the rest of the morning while the voices of pupils and teacher buzzed monotonously on. At recess she held her own with the fleetest in prisoner's base and Anthony-over, but before the two hours were ended she stole back to the schoolhouse. Some of the older pupils were there before her, studying map questions around the teacher's table.

"Fetch my geography here, right this minute, Melissy Dean," a tall boy commanded as her little bare feet reached lightly up to the high door-sill; "I know you're the very miss that's had it."

She produced the book leisurely from behind a board tacked across the studding of the wall and carried it with comical dignity to the table. "I could study geogerphy myself if I just wa'n't so little," she said, in rebuttal of his imperiousness; "an' anyhow I can answer all the questions the rest of you've been over."

"Try her! Try her!" the tall boy shouted derisively.

They flung their questions without mercy, but the little maid held her ground.

"Try her on the equater 'n' the 'maginary lines," one of the girls suggested maliciously.

Melissa's white skin flushed. "There ain't any meanin' to them things," she said, "an' I never learnt 'em. I don't believe anybody ever did."

"I don't either, Melissy," a much-befreckled boy agreed fervently; proud, moreover, to be her champion.

He managed to keep near her side when school was out and the noisy crowd streamed along the homeward way, their number diminishing at every cross-roads in the fading light. Sometimes he found a few late blackberries and poured them into her slim hands held up to receive them.

"How'd you ever make out to learn all that hard stuff in the geogerphy, Melissy?" he asked in honest admiration when at last only he and she were together, three miles of winding road behind them, and Mount Yonah with its deepening shadows before their faces.

"Was it hard?" she said, innocently. "I didn't know it."

Presently she looked up from her unaccustomed introspection. "I just love to learn things, Timothy,"—confiding the secret for the first time. "I'm gonter learn everything there is before I die."

"You won't learn it up here in White County," Timothy responded with conviction. His honest blue eyes were studying her face curiously.

"I'm gonter learn it," the child repeated, looking toward an opening between the hills where the gold of sunset still lingered.

"I would do the best I knew how for you, Melissa."

"I know you would, Timothy."

They were in the solitude that shut in Hebron church and the decaying school-house,—more decayed than in the days when they went there together. Melissa had a fancy for making the old meeting-house tidy for the monthly preaching day, and Timothy came often with her to help. The house, the white level space before the door, even the path leading out to the lonely road, had all been swept clean of so much as a leaf, and the two were resting now on one of the flat sunken grave-