Besides, Miranda was willing to take a chance if the stakes were high enough, so she hurried happily off to school with her head held high and the sour cream pail clattering against her dinner pail with reckless hilarity; while Miranda laid her neat little plans.
Arrived at the school-house, she deposited the pail of sour cream together with its mate the dinner pail inconspicuously on the inner ledge of the window over the teacher's desk-chair. The ledge was wide and the pails almost out of sight from the school-room. At noon, however, Miranda, after eating her lunch, replaced her empty dinner pail and made a careful rearrangement of all the pails on the ledge, her own and others, so that they were grouped quite innocently nearer to the front edge. Miranda herself was early seated at her desk studying demurely when the others came in.
The very atmosphere that afternoon seemed electric. Even the very little scholars seemed to understand that something was going to happen before school "let out." and when just as the master was about to send the school out for afternoon recess he paused and announced solemnly, "Allan Whitney, you may remain in your seat!" they knew it was almost at hand.
Chapter IV
Miranda had played her cards well. She sat studiously in her seat until everybody was out of the school-room but Mr. Applethorn, Allan and herself, and then she raised her hand demurely for permission to speak:
"Teacher, please may I go’s soon 'z I finish my ’gzamples? Grandma wants me to go to Granny MacVane's on a errand, an' she don't want me to stay out after dark."
The teacher gave a curt permission. He had no time just then to fathom Miranda Griscom's deeps, and had always felt that she belonged to the enemy. She was as well out of the room when he gave Allan Whitney his dues.
Miranda worked away vigorously. The examples were already finished, but she had no mind to leave until the right moment. Such studious ways in Miranda were astonishing, and if Mr. Applethorn had not been otherwise occupied he would certainly have suspected something, seeing Miranda, the usually alert one, bending over her slate, a stubby pencil in her hand, her brows wrinkled hard over a supposedly perplexing question, her two red plaits sticking out at each side, and no eyes nor ears for what was going on in the playground.
Allan Whitney sat serenely whittling a small stick into a very tiny sword, and half whistling under his breath until the master, in a voice that was meant to be stentorian, uttered a solemn: "Silence, sir! I say, Silence!"
Allan looked up pleasantly.
"All right sir, just as you say sir."
The master was growing angry. Miranda saw it out of the tail of her eye. He glowered at the boy a minute.
"I said silence," he roared. "You've no need to answer further. Just keep silence!"
"Very well, sir, I heard you sir, and I said all right sir, just as you say sir," answered Allan sunnily again, with the most aggravating smile on his face, but not a shade of impudence in his voice. Allan knew how to be impudent in a perfectly respectful way.
"Hold your tongue, sir!" fairly howled the master.
"Oh, thank you, I will sir," said Allan, but it was the teacher who, red and angry, found he had to hold his, while Allan had the last word, for just then the boy who had been appointed to ring the bell for recess to be over, appeared 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