At last she opened the door and came out along the walk with a tablecloth. She shook her cloth, and then her singing ceased and Bradley went on with his work.
"Hello, Brad!" called a sudden voice.
He looked up and saw Nettie Russell's roguish face peering over the board fence.
"Hello," he replied, and stood an instant in wordless surprise. "I didn't know you lived there."
"Well, I do. Aint tickled to death to find it out, I s'pose? Say, you aint so very mad at me, are yeh?" she added insinuatingly.
He didn't know what to say, so he kept silent. He noticed for the first time how childishly round her face was!
She took a new turn. "Say, aint you hungry?"
Bradley admitted that he had eaten an early breakfast. He did not say it was composed of fried pork and potatoes and baker's bread, without tea, coffee, or milk.
The girl seemed delighted to think he was hungry.
"You wait a minute," she commanded, and her smiling face disappeared from the top of the fence. Brad went to work to keep from catching cold, wondering what she was going to do. She reappeared soon with a fat home-made sausage and a couple of warm biscuits which she insisted upon his taking.
"They're all buttered and – they've got sugar on 'em," she whispered significantly.
"Say, you eat now, while I saw," she commanded, coming around through the gate.
She had put on her fascinator hood, but her hands and wrists were bare. She struggled away on a log, putting her knee on it in a comically resolute style.
"The saw always goes crooked," she said in despair. Bradley laughed at her heartily.
"Say, do you do this for fun?" she asked, stopping to puff, her cheeks a beautiful pink.
"No, I don't. I do it because I'm obliged to."
She threw down the saw. "Well, that beats me; I can't saw, but I can cook. I made them biscuits." She challenged his opinion, as he well knew.
"They're first rate," he admitted, and they were friends. She watched him eat with apparent satisfaction.
"Say, I can't stay here, I'll freeze. Are yeh going to be here till noon?"
"Yes."
"Well, when I whistle you come in and get some grub, will yeh?" Bradley smiled back at her laughing face.
"This ain't your folks' wood pile."
"What's the difference?" she replied. "You jest come in, will yeh?"
"Yes, I'll come."
"Like fun you will! Honest?" she persisted.
"Hope to die," he said solemnly.
"That's the checker," she said, and disappeared with a click of the tongue.
Bradley worked away in a glow of cheerfulness. It was astonishing how much this little victory over a roguish girl meant to him. He had changed one person's ridicule to friendship, and it seemed to be prophetic of other victories.
The time seemed very short that forenoon. Once or twice Nettie came out to bring some news about the cooking.
"Say, I'm making an apple pie. I'm a dandy on pies and cakes."
"I guess they would be 'pizen' cakes."
She threw an imaginary club at him.
"Well, if that ain't the sickest old joke! You'll go without any pie if you get off such a thing again."
But as dinner-time drew on he felt more and more unwilling to go into the kitchen.
He heard her whistle, but he remained at the saw-horse. It would do in the country, but not here. He had no right to go in there and eat.
There was a note of impatience in her voice when she looked over the fence and said, "Why don't you come?"
"I dassant!"
"Oh, bother! What y' 'fraid of?"
"What business have I got to eat your dinner? This aint your wood-pile."
"Say, if you don't come in I'll – I dunno what!"
"Bring it out here, it's warm."
"I won't do it; you've got to come in; the old man's gone up town and mother won't throw you out. There isn't anybody in the kitchen. Come on now," she pleaded.
Bradley followed her into the house, feeling a good deal like a very large dog, very hungry, who had followed a child's invitation into the parlor, and felt out of place.
He sat down by the fire, and silently ate what she placed before him, while she chattered away in high glee. When Mrs. Russell came in, Nettie did not take the trouble to introduce him to her mother, who moved about the room in a wordless way, smiling a little about the eyes. She was entirely subject to her daughter. She heard them discussing lessons and concluded they were classmates.
Bradley went back to his wood-sawing and soon finished the job. As he shouldered his saw and saw-buck, Nettie came out and peered over the fence again.
"Say, goin' to attend the social Monday?"
"Guess not. I ain't much on such things."
"It's lots o' fun; we spin the platter and all kinds o' things. I'm goin'," she looked archly inviting.
Bradley colored. He was not astute, but hints like this were not far from kicks. He looked down at his saw as he said, "I guess I won't go, I've got to study."
"Well, good-by," she said without mortification. She was so much of a child yet that she could be jilted without keen pain. "See y' Monday," she said as she ran into the house.
Someway Bradley's life was lightened by that day's experience. He went home to his bleak little room in a resolute mood. He sat down at his table upon which lay his algebra, determined to prepare Monday's lessons, but the pencil fell from his hand, his head sank down and lay upon the open page before him. Wood sawing had worn him down and algebra had made him sleep.
V.
BRADLEY RISES TO ADDRESS THE CARTHAGINIANS
He was now facing another terror, the Friday afternoon recitals, in which alternate sections of the pupils were obliged to appear before the public in the chapel to recite or read an essay. It was an ordeal that tried the souls of the bravest of them all.
Unquestionably it kept many pupils away. Nothing could be more terrible to a shrinking awkward boy or girl from a farm than this requirement, to stand upon a raised platform with nothing to break the effect of sheer crucifixion. It was appalling. It was a pillory, a stake, a burning, and yet there was a fearful fascination about it, and it was doubtful if a majority of the students would have voted for its abolition. The preps and juniors saw the seniors winning electrical applause from the audience and fancied the same prize was within their reach. There was no surer or more instant success to be won than that which followed a splendid oratorical effort on the platform. It was worth the cost.
Each new-comer dreaded it for weeks and talked about it constantly. Bradley, like all the rest before him, could not eat a thing on the morning preceding his trial, and in fact had suffered a distinct loss of appetite from the middle of the week.
Mary Barber, a tall, awkward, badly-dressed girl, met him as he was going up the steps after the first bell.
"Say, how you feelin'! I've shook all the mornin'. I don't know what I'm goin' to do. I'm just sick."
"Why don't you say so an' get off?" Bradley suggested.
"Because that's what I did last time, and it won't work any more." The poor girl's teeth were chattering with her fright. She laughed at herself in an hysterical way, and wrung her hands, as if with cold, and dropped back into the broadest kind of dialect. "Oh, I feel 'sif my stomach was all gone."
Nettie Russell regarded it