The Brown Mouse. Quick Herbert

even now,” said Jennie, taking advantage of his depleted stock of words, “while we roam beyond the Milky Way, we aren’t getting any votes for me for county superintendent.”

      Jim said nothing. He was quite, quite reestablished on the earth.

      “Don’t you want me to be elected, Jim?”

      Jim seemed to ponder this for some time – a period of taking the matter under advisement which caused Jennie to drop his arm and busy herself with her skirts.

      “Yes,” said Jim, at last; “of course I do.”

      Nothing more was said until they reached the schoolhouse door.

      “Well,” said Jennie rather indignantly, “I’m glad there are plenty of voters who are more enthusiastic about me than you seem to be!”

      More interesting to a keen observer than the speeches, were the unusual things in the room itself. To be sure, there were on the blackboards exercises and outlines, of lessons in language, history, mathematics, geography and the like. But these were not the usual things taken from text-books. The problems in arithmetic were calculations as to the feeding value of various rations for live stock, records of laying hens and computation as to the excess of value in eggs produced over the cost of feed. Pinned to the wall were market reports on all sorts of farm products, and especially numerous were the statistics on the prices of cream and butter. There were files of farm papers piled about, and racks of agricultural bulletins. In one corner of the room was a typewriting machine, and in another a sewing machine. Parts of an old telephone were scattered about on the teacher’s desk. A model of a piggery stood on a shelf, done in cardboard. Instead of the usual collection of text-books in the desk, there were hectograph copies of exercises, reading lessons, arithmetical tables and essays on various matters relating to agriculture, all of which were accounted for by two or three hand-made hectographs – a very fair sort of printing plant – lying on a table. The members of the school board were there, looking on these evidences of innovation with wonder and more or less disfavor. Things were disorderly. The text-books recently adopted by the board against some popular protest had evidently been pitched, neck and crop, out of the school by the man whom Bonner had termed a dub. It was a sort of contempt for the powers that be.

      Colonel Woodruff was in the chair. After the speechifying was over, and the stereotyped, though rather illogical, appeal had been made for voters of the one party to cast the straight ticket, and for those of the other faction to scratch, the colonel rose to adjourn the meeting.

      Newton Bronson, safely concealed behind taller people, called out, “Jim Irwin! speech!”

      There was a giggle, a slight sensation, and many voices joined in the call for the new schoolmaster.

      Colonel Woodruff felt the unwisdom of ignoring the demand. Probably he relied upon Jim’s discretion and expected a declination.

      Jim arose, seedy and lank, and the voices ceased, save for another suppressed titter.

      “I don’t know,” said Jim, “whether this call upon me is a joke or not. If it is, it isn’t a practical one, for I can’t talk. I don’t care much about parties or politics. I don’t know whether I’m a Democrat, a Republican or a Populist.”

      This caused a real sensation. The nerve of the fellow! Really, it must in justice be said, Jim was losing himself in a desire to tell his true feelings. He forgot all about Jennie and her candidacy – about everything except his real, true feelings. This proves that he was no politician.

      “I don’t see much in this county campaign that interests me,” he went on – and Jennie Woodruff reddened, while her seasoned father covered his mouth with his hand to conceal a smile. “The politicians come out into the farming districts every campaign and get us hayseeds for anything they want. They always have got us. They’ve got us again! They give us clodhoppers the glad hand, a cheap cigar, and a cheaper smile after election; – and that’s all. I know it, you all know it, they know it. I don’t blame them so very much. The trouble is we don’t ask them to do anything better. I want a new kind of rural school; but I don’t see any prospect, no matter how this election goes, for any change in them. We in the Woodruff District will have to work out our own salvation. Our political ring never’ll do anything but the old things. They don’t want to, and they haven’t sense enough to do it if they did. That’s all – and I don’t suppose I should have said as much as I have!”

      There was stark silence for a moment when he sat down, and then as many cheers for Jim as for the principal speaker of the evening, cheers mingled with titters and catcalls. Jim felt a good deal as he had done when he knocked down Mr. Billy’s chauffeur – rather degraded and humiliated, as if he had made an ass of himself. And as he walked out of the door, the future county superintendent passed by him in high displeasure, and walked home with some one else.

      Jim found the weather much colder than it had been while coming. He really needed an Eskimo’s fur suit.

      CHAPTER VII

      THE NEW WINE

      In the little strip of forest which divided the sown from the Iowa sown wandered two boys in earnest converse. They seemed to be Boy Trappers, and from their backloads of steel-traps one of them might have been Frank Merriwell, and the other Dead-Shot Dick. However, though it was only mid-December, and the fur of all wild varmints was at its primest, they were bringing their traps into the settlements, instead of taking them afield. “The settlements” were represented by the ruinous dwelling of the Simmses, and the boy who resembled Frank Merriwell was Raymond Simms. The other, who was much more barbarously accoutered, whose overalls were fringed, who wore a cartridge belt about his person, and carried hatchet, revolver, and a long knife with a deerfoot handle, and who so studiously looked like Dead-Shot Dick, was our old friend of the road gang, Newton Bronson. On the right, on the left, a few rods would have brought the boys out upon the levels of rich corn-fields, and in sight of the long rows of cottonwoods, willows, box-elders and soft maples along the straight roads, and of the huge red barns, each of which possessed a numerous progeny of outbuildings, among which the dwelling held a dubious headship. But here, they could be the Boy Trappers – a thin fringe of bushes and trees made of the little valley a forest to the imagination of the boys. Newton put down his load, and sat upon a stump to rest.