in the doorway and gave it three taps, and the eager scholars who had been hovering in excited groups hurried back to their seats wondering what was about to happen.
They settled into quiet sooner than usual and sat in breathless attention, their eyes apparently riveted on their hooks, awaiting the call to the last class of the afternoon, but in reality watching alternately the angry visage of the teacher, and the calm pale one of Allan Whitney, who now drew himself to his full height and sat with folded arms.
The master reached into his desk, drew forth the ferrule, and threw it with skilful twirl straight into the face of the boy. Then Allan, accepting the challenge, arose and came forward to the platform, but he did not stoop to pick up the ruler and bring it with him according to custom. Instead he came as a man might have come who had just been insulted, his head held high, his eyes glowing darkly in his white set face, for the ruler had struck him across the mouth, and its sting had sunk into his soul. In that blow seemed concentrated all the injustices of all the years when he had been misjudged by his teachers and fellow-townsmen. Not but that he had not been a mischievous, bad boy often and often, but not always; and he resented the fact that when he did try to do right nobody would give him credit for it.
It was just at this crucial moment that Miranda arose with her completed arithmetic paper and fluttered conspicuously up to the desk.
"May I go now, teacher?"she asked sweetly, "I've got 'em all done, every one."
The master waved her away without ceremony. She was to him like a gadfly annoying when he needed all his senses to master the trouble in hand.
Miranda slipped joyously into the cloak-room apparently as unconscious of Allan Whitney standing close beside her, as if he had been miles away; and a moment thereafter those who sat in the extreme back of the room might have seen the dim flutter of a brown calico sunbonnet landing on top of the dinner pails just over the master's head, if they had not been too occupied with the changing visage of the master, and the quiet form of Allan standing in defiant attitude before him. Mr. Applethorn was a great believer in deliberation, and was never afraid of a pause. He thought it impressive. At this moment, while he gathered all his courage for the encounter that he knew was before him, he paused and expected to quell Allan Whitney by the glance of his two angry eyes.
The school-master was still seated, though drawn up to his full height with folded arms, looking dignified as he knew how to look, and far more impressive than if he had been standing in front of his tall pupil. Suddenly, before a word had been spoken, and very quietly for a thing of metal, the tin pail on the ledge over his hair began to move forward, as if pushed by a phalanx of its fellows from behind. It came to the edge,—it toppled,—and a broad avalanche of thick white substance gushed forth, preceded by a giddy tin cover, which reeled and pirouetted for a moment on the master's astonished head, took a step down his nose, and waltzed off to the platform and under the stove. This was followed by a concluding white deluge as the pail descended and settled down over the noble brows of Mr. Applethorn, who arose in haste and horror, ripping sour cream, spluttering and snorting like a porpoise, amid a howling, screaming, shouting mob of irreverent scholars who were laughing until the tears streamed down their cheeks.
Miranda, appearing penitently at the door of the cloak-room, her brown sunbonnet in her hand, ready tears prepared to be shed if need be, at the loss of her precious sour cream,—accidentally knocked over when she went to get her sunbonnet which some malicious girl must have put up high out of her reach,—found no need for any further efforts on her part. Obviously the fight was over. The school-master was in no condition to administer either justice or injustice to anybody. Allan Whitney at this crisis arose magnificently to the occasion. With admirable solicitude he relieved the school-master of his unwelcome helmet, and with his own soiled and crumpled handkerchief wiped the lumps of sour cream from his erstwhile adversary's features.
For one blessed hilarious moment the school-master had stood helpless and enraged, blinded and speechless, choking and gasping and dripping sour cream from every point of his hair, nose, collar, chin, and the tips of his very fingers; and the wild mob of hysterical pupils stood on the desks and viewed him, bending double with their mirth, or jumping up and down in their ecstasy. The next moment Allan Whitney had taken command, and with one raised hand had silenced the hilarity, with a second motion had cleared the room, and a low word to one of his devoted slaves brought a pail of water to his side. Then in the seclusion of the empty school-room he applied himself to the rescue of Mr. Applethorn.
Miranda, in the shelter of the cloak-room door, secure for the moment from the cream-filled eyes of the teacher, watched her hero in awe as he mopped away at his enemy, as tenderly and kindly as if he had been a little child in trouble. She was too filled with mixed emotions to care to play the guileless, saucy part she had prepared for herself in this comedy. She was filled with dread lest after all Allan did not approve of what she had done, and did not like it. That he would be in the least deceived by her sunbonnet trick she never for a moment expected. That he would be angry because she had stopped the fight had not crossed her mind before. Now she stood in an agony of fear, forgetting the comical sight of the school-master done in sour cream, and trembled lest she had hopelessly offended her hero. Perhaps after all it wasn't fair to interfere with the game. Perhaps she had transgressed the rules of the code and lost her high place in his estimation. If she had, no punishment would be too great, no penance suffice to cover her transgression. The sun would be blotted out of her little world, and her heart broken forever.
At that instant of dejection Allan turned from wiping out the victim's left eye and gave the cringing Miranda a large, kind, appreciative wink. Suddenly her sun rose high once more, and her heart sprang lightly up again. She responded with her tongue in her cheek, and a knowing grimace, departing, warmed and satisfied, taking the precaution to make her exit through the window of the cloak-room. Down behind the alders by the creek, however, her natural man asserted itself, and she sat down to laugh till she cried over the spectacle of her teacher in a tin pail enveloped in sour cream. Next morning she found a large piece of spruce gum in her desk with a bit of paper wrapped around it on which was written in Allan's familiar scrawl:
"You are a little brick."
The strange thing about it all was that Allan and Mr. Applethorn became excellent friends after that; but the selectmen, though they offered every inducement in their power, could not prevail upon the teacher to remain longer than the end of the month. Poor little Mr. Applethorn could not get over his humiliation before his scholars, and he never quite understood how that sour cream got located over his head, though Allan gave a very plausible explanation and kept him in some mysterious way from making too close an investigation.
After that Allan Whitney always had a glance and a wink, and on rare occasions, a smile, for Miranda, but the boy did not come back to school again after Mr. Applethorn left, and the little girl seldom saw him except on the street. However, her worship of him relaxed no whit and her young heart resented the things that were said about him. Always she was on the watch to do him a good turn, but not for a long time did it come and then it came with a vengeance, a short, sharp trial of her loyalty.
Chapter V
It was a bitter cold night in November and Miranda had crept up close to the fireplace with her spelling-book—not that she cared in the least for her spelling lesson, though there was to be a spelling-down contest the next day in school, but her spelling-book was always a good excuse to Grandma Heath for not knitting or spinning of an evening.
Grandpa Heath came in presently, stamping away the snow, and shutting the outside door noisily. One could see he was excited. He strode across the room and hung up the big key that locked the old smoke-house
