spats of applause from the useless hands of Newton Bronson gave the final touch of absurdity to a situation which Jim had felt to be ridiculous all through. Had it not been for Jennie Woodruff’s “Humph!” stinging him to do something outside the round of duties into which he had fallen, had it not been for the absurd notion that perhaps, after they had heard his speech, they would place him in charge of the school, and that he might be able to do something really important in it, he would not have been there. As he sat down, he felt himself a silly clodhopper, filled with the east wind of his own conceit, out of touch with the real world of men. He knew himself a dreamer. The nodding board of directors, the secretary, actually snoring, and the bored audience restored the field-hand to a sense of his proper place.
“We have had the privilege of list’nin’,” said Con Bonner, rising, “to a great speech, Mr. Prisidint. We should be proud to have a borned orator like this in the agricultural pop’lation of the district. A reg’lar William Jennin’s Bryan. I don’t understand what he was trying to tell us, but sometimes I’ve had the same difficulty with the spaches of the Boy Orator of the Platte. Makin’ a good spache is one thing, and teaching a good school is another, but in order to bring this matter before the board, I nominate Mr. James E. Irwin, the Boy Orator of the Woodruff District, and the new white hope, f’r the job of teacher of this school, and I move that when he shall have received a majority of the votes of this board, the secretary and prisidint be insthructed to enter into a contract with him f’r the comin’ year.”
The seconding of motions on a board of three has its objectionable features, since it seems to commit a majority of the body to the motion in advance. The president, therefore, followed usage, when he said – “If there’s no objection, it will be so ordered. The chair hears no objection – and it is so ordered. Prepare the ballots for a vote on the election of teacher, Mr. Secretary. Each votes his preference for teacher. A majority elects.”
For months, the ballots had come out of the box – an empty crayon-box – Herman Paulson, one; Prudence Foster, one; Margaret Gilmartin, one; and every one present expected the same result now. There was no surprise, however, in view of the nomination of Jim Irwin by the blarneying Bonner when the secretary smoothed out the first ballot, and read: “James E. Irwin, one.” Clearly this was the Bonner vote; but when the next slip came forth, “James E. Irwin, two,” the Board of Directors of the Woodruff Independent District were stunned at the slowly dawning knowledge that they had made an election! Before they had rallied, the secretary drew from the box the third and last ballot, and read, “James E. Irwin, three.”
President Bronson choked as he announced the result – choked and stammered, and made very hard weather of it, but he went through with the motion, as we all run in our grooves.
“The ballot having shown the unanimous election of James E. Irwin, I declare him elected.”
He dropped into his chair, while the secretary, a very methodical man, drew from his portfolio a contract duly drawn up save for the signatures of the officers of the district, and the name and signature of the teacher-elect. This he calmly filled out, and passed over to the president, pointing to the dotted line. Mr. Bronson would have signed his own death-warrant at that moment, not to mention a perfectly legal document, and signed with Peterson and Bonner looking on stonily. The secretary signed and shoved the contract over to Jim Irwin.
“Sign there,” he said.
Jim looked it over, saw the other signatures, and felt an impulse to dodge the whole thing. He could not feel that the action of the board was serious. He thought of the platform he had laid down for himself, and was daunted. He thought of the days in the open field, and of the untroubled evenings with his books, and he shrank from the work. Then he thought of Jennie Woodruff’s “Humph!” – and he signed!
“Move we adjourn,” said Peterson.
“No ’bjection ’t’s so ordered!” said Mr. Bronson.
The secretary and Jim went out, while the directors waited.
“What the Billy – ” began Bonner, and finished lamely! “What for did you vote for the dub, Ez?”
“I voted for him,” replied Bronson, “because he fought for my boy this afternoon. I didn’t want it stuck into him too hard. I wanted him to have one vote.”
“An’ I wanted him to have wan vote, too,” said Bonner. “I thought mesilf the only dang fool on the board – an’ he made a spache that airned wan vote – but f’r the love of hivin, that dub f’r a teacher! What come over you, Haakon – you voted f’r him, too!”
“Ay vanted him to have one wote, too,” said Peterson.
And in this wise, Jim became the teacher in the Woodruff District – all on account of Jennie Woodruff’s “Humph!”
CHAPTER III
WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE
Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position of teacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like a ghost’s or a bandit’s. That is, he walked of nights and on rainy days.
On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff’s fields as of yore. Had he been appointed to a position attached to a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year, he might have spent six months on a preliminary vacation in learning something about his new duties. But Jim’s salary was to be three hundred and sixty dollars for nine months’ work in the Woodruff school, and he was to find himself – and his mother. Therefore, he had to indulge in his loose habits of night walking and roaming about after hours only, or on holidays and in foul weather.
The Simms family, being from the mountings of Tennessee, were rather startled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless, silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They had lived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before one passed through the palin’s and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to know whether the visitor was friend or foe?
From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim’s appearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much like his own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old Man Simms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhat stood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, could possibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.
“Stranger,” said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, “you’re right welcome, but in my kentry you’d find it dangersome to walk in thisaway.”
“How so?” queried Jim Irwin.
“You’d more’n likely git shot up some,” replied Mr. Simms, “onless you whooped from the big road.”
“I didn’t know that,” replied Jim. “I’m ignorant of the customs of other countries. Would you rather I’d whoop from the big road – nobody else will.”
“I reckon,” replied Mr. Simms, “that we-all will have to accommodate ourse’ves to the ways hyeh.”
Evidently Jim was the Simms’ first caller since they had settled on the little brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of their mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where the creek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, with the oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine themselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston. The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternal black soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, in comparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the
