Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/27

 onward Billy Waterman was his slave. The young fellow's dreamy eyes followed him wherever he went, quite undisturbed by the sneers of Tom Monro, who had no sympathy with such foolishness.

The teacher had all the pupils with him now, bar one. Tom Monro was not clever in any line, except in the single subject of arithmetic; and although Copford frequently praised the celerity with which the lad solved difficult problems, yet the intended flattery made no impression upon Tom's hard, bullet head. There came into the young man's eyes, on these occasions, a lowering look, which said as plainly as words, "You can't soft solder me."

One evening, after school had been dismissed, Copford sat at his desk, writing in the head-lines of the copy-books, for this was before the days of Spencerian copper-plate head-lines, and it was the teacher's duty to inscribe carefully at the top of the page such innocent expressions as: "Many men of many minds, many birds of many kinds," which gave the pupil working on the letter M a sufficient quantity down the page of both capital and small script M&apos;s to inure his hand to its intricacies. Tom Monro had been more than usually sullen that day, and although it was evident the cloud would soon break, yet impending disaster did not trouble the mind of the teacher. There arose, instead, between his eye and the page, the fair comely head of Priscilla, and he wondered to find such a flower of sweetness and light in a rough mill town. He took up her copy-book and looked long at the pretty, accurate, round hand, the letters of which were formed even better than he could write them himself. Then he did something that was exceedingly unlike what we might expect from a grave pedagogue, and which would have amazed his pupils had they sat in that empty room. He raised the copy-book to his lips for one brief moment, and, as he did so, was startled by a timid knock at the inside door. "Come in," he cried, the color mounting to his cheeks.

The door opened, as one might say, timorously, and there he saw Priscilla herself standing before him, her smooth cheeks flushed like a lovely sunset, as if she had been running, her hand trembling as she held the knob of the door.

"Oh, master," she cried, breathlessly, "please do not give us the grindstone question to-morrow!"

"The grindstone question?" repeated Copford with rising inflection, not understanding what she meant, then adding with softened voice: "Come in, Priscilla."

But the girl still stood on the doorstep, which communicated with the outside closed porch that shielded her from view had any one been passing, a most unlikely event, for the schoolhouse stood in a lonely situation.

"Four men, A, B, C, D," said the girl, hurriedly, "bought a grindstone four feet in diameter, and each agreed to grind off his share. How many inches should A, B, C, and D grind off respectively?"

"What an idiotic way of buying a grindstone!" said Copford, laughing and advancing towards her, but the girl shrunk against the door. The young man seeing her timidity, stopped in his approach, and added, a shade of tenderness unconsciously mellowing his voice: "Won't you come in, Priscilla? I have never tried the grindstone question, but I think I can manage it. I will work it out on the blackboard here. If you sit down I will explain it as I go along."

"Oh, it isn't that!" cried Priscilla, with an anxious note in her voice. "I can do the question as it is done in the book, although I am afraid I don't understand it very well; but what I wanted to tell you is, that Tom Monro does it in another way and gets the correct answer. He is very stubborn, and refuses to do it in the way the book says it should be done. Then there is trouble—and—and—"

"And Tom thrashes the teacher?" supplemented Copford, inquiringly.

"Yes, sir," replied Priscilla, blushing deeply, her eyes on the floor. "The smaller children are frightened, and they cry, and we all sit here helpless. It makes me feel how uncivilized we are, and if it ever happens again, I shall never return to school."

"Ah, Priscilla, that would be cruel; I should not care to teach if you were not here. If the good pupils desert," he added quickly, seeing the look of alarm that came into her face, with a movement indicative of retreat, "and leave the teacher alone with the bad, then are the innocent punished, while the guilty are triumphant. So you want me to avoid the grindstone question to-morrow?"

"Yes, please."

"It seems to me rather shirking my responsibilities, but I'll tell you what I will do; I'll let it stand over until day after to-morrow, and perhaps in the meantime I can devise some method of avoiding a public conflict. By the way, did any of