The Brown Mouse Part 20

"School's about done," objected Mr. Bronson.

"Won't the cream pool pretty near pay the expenses of running the school all summer?" asked Bonner.

"We ought to run the school plant all the time," said Jim. "It's the only way to get full value out of the investment. And we've corn-club work, pig-club work, poultry work and canning-club work which make it very desirable to keep in session with only a week's vacation. If you'll add the cream pool, it will make the school the hardest working crowd in the district and doing actual farm work, too. I like Mr. Bonner's suggestion."

"Well," said Haakon Peterson, who had joined the group, "Ay tank we better have a meeting of the board and discuss it."

"Well, darn it," said Columbus Brown, "I want in on this cream pool--and I live outside the district!"

"We'll let you in, Clumb," said the colonel.

"Sure!" said Pete. "We hain't no more sense than to let any one in, Clumb.

Come in, the water's fine. We ain't proud!"

"Well," said Clumb, "if this feller is goin' to do school work of this kind, I want in the district, too."

"We'll come to that one of these days," said Jim. "The district is too small."

Wilbur Smythe's car stopped at the distant gate and honked for him--a signal which broke up the party. Haakon Peterson pa.s.sed the word to the colonel and Mr. Bronson for a board meeting the next evening. The picnic broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples to their homes, and young folks in top buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in the surrounding villages. Jim walked across the fields to his home--neither old nor young, having neither sweetheart with whom to dance nor farm to demand labor in its inexorable ch.o.r.es. He turned after crawling through a wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as she was suavely a.s.sisted into the car by the frock-coated lawyer.

"You saw what he did?" said the colonel interrogatively, as he and his daughter sat on the Woodruff veranda that evening. "Who taught him the supreme wisdom of holding back his troops when they grew too wild for attack?"

"He may lose them," said Jennie.

"Not so," said the colonel. "Individuals of the Brown Mouse type always succeed when they find their environment. And I believe Jim has found his."

"Well," said Jennie, "I wish his environment would find him some clothes.

It's a shame the way he has to go looking. He'd be nice-appearing if he was dressed anyway."

"Would he?" queried the colonel. "I wonder, now! Well, Jennie, as his oldest friend having any knowledge of clothes, I think it's up to you to act as a committee of one on Jim's apparel."

CHAPTER XVII

A TROUBLE SHOOTER

A sudden July storm had drenched the fields and filled the swales with water. The cultivators left the corn-fields until the next day's sun and a night of seepage might once more fit the black soil for tillage. The little boys rolled up their trousers and tramped home from school with the rich mud squeezing up between their toes, thrilling with the electricity of clean-washed nature, and the little girls rather wished they could go barefooted, too, as, indeed, some of the more sensible did.

A lithe young man with climbers on his legs walked up a telephone pole by the roadside to make some repairs to the wires, which had been whipped into a "cross" by the wind of the storm and the las.h.i.+ng of the limbs of the roadside trees. He had tied his horse to a post up the road, and was running out the trouble on the line, which was plentifully in evidence just then. Wind and lightning had played hob with the system, and the line repairer was cheerfully profane, in the manner of his sort, glad by reason of the fire of summer in his veins, and incensed at the forces of nature which had brought him out through the mud to the Woodruff District to do these piffling jobs that any of the subscribers ought to have known how to do themselves, and none of which took more than a few minutes of his time when he reached the seat of the difficulty.

Jim Irwin, his school out for the day, came along the muddy road with two of his pupils, a bare-legged little boy and a tall girl with flaxen hair--Bettina Hansen and her small brother Hans, who refused to answer to any name other than Hans Nilsen. His father's name was Nils Hansen, and Hans, a born conservative, being the son of Nils, regarded himself as rightfully a Nilsen, and disliked the "Hans Hansen" on the school register. Thus do European customs sometimes survive among us.

Hans strode through the pool of water which the shower had spread completely over the low turnpike a few rods from the pole on which the trouble shooter was at work, and the electrician ceased his labors and rested himself on a cross-arm while he waited to see what the flaxen-haired girl would do when she came to it.

Jim and Bettina stopped at the water's edge. "Oh!" cried she, "I can't get through!" The trouble shooter felt the impulse to offer his aid, but thought it best on the whole, to leave the matter in the hands of the lank schoolmaster.

"I'll carry you across," said Jim.

"I'm too heavy," answered Bettina.

"Nonsense!" said Jim.

"She's awful heavy," piped Hans. "Better take off your shoes, anyhow!"

Jim thought of the welfare of his only good trousers, and saw that Hans'

suggestion was good; but a mental picture of himself with shoes in hand and bare legs restrained him. He took Bettina in his arms and went slowly across, walking rather farther with his blus.h.i.+ng burden than was strictly necessary. Bettina was undoubtedly heavy; but she was also wonderfully pleasant to feel in arms which had never borne such a burden before; and her arms about his neck as he slopped through the pond were curiously thrilling. Her cheek brushed his as he set her upon her feet and felt, rather than thought, that if there had only been a good reason for it, Bettina would have willingly been carried much farther.

"How strong you are!" she panted. "I'm awful heavy, ain't I?"

"Not very," said Jim, with scholastic accuracy. "You're just right. I--I mean, you're simply well-nourished and wholesomely plump!"

Bettina blushed still more rosily.

"You've ruined your clothes," said she. "Now you'll have to come home with me and let me--see who's there!"

Jim looked up at the trouble shooter, and went over to the foot of the pole. The man walked down, striking his spurs deep into the wood for safety.

"h.e.l.lo!" said he. "School out?"

"For the day," said Jim. "Any important work on the telephone line now?"

"Just trouble-shooting," was the answer. "I have to spend three hours hunting these troubles, to one in fixing 'em up."

"Do they take much technical skill?" asked Jim.

"Mostly shakin' out crosses, and puttin' in new carbons in the arresters,"

replied the trouble man. "Any one ought to do any of 'em with five minutes' instruction. But these farmers--they'd rather have me drive ten miles to take a hair-pin from across the binding-posts than to do it themselves. That's the way they are!"

"Will you be out here to-morrow?" queried the teacher.

"Sure!"

"I'd like to have you show my cla.s.s in manual training something about the telephone," said Jim. "The reason we can't fix our own troubles, if they are as simple as you say, is because we don't know how simple they are."

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Professor," said the trouble man. "I'll bring a phone with me and give 'em a lecture. I don't see how I can employ the company's time any better than in beating a little telephone sense into the heads of the community. Set the time, and I'll be there with bells."

Bettina and her teacher walked on up the shady lane, feeling that they had a secret. They were very nearly on a parity as to the innocence of soul with which they held this secret, except that Bettina was much more single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was mysteriously blissful--and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied in Jennie Woodruff.

Thus interested in each other, they turned the corner which took them out of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to Nils Hansen's farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple method of cutting across lots. Bettina's girlish instinct called for something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed yesterday. She lingered, standing close by Jim Irwin.

"Won't you come in and let me clean the mud off you," she asked, "and give you some dry socks?"

"Oh, no!" replied Jim. "It's almost as far to your house as it is home.

Thank you, no."

"There's a splash of mud on your face," said Bettina. "Let me--" And with her little handkerchief she began wiping off the mud. Jim stooped to permit the attention, but not much, for Bettina was of the mold of women of whom warriors are born--their faces approached, and Jim recognized a crisis in the fact that Bettina's mouth was presented for a kiss. Jim met the occasion like the gentleman he was. He did not leave her stung by rejection; neither did he obey the impulse to respond to the invitation according to his man's instinct; he took the rosy face between his palms and kissed her forehead--and left her in possession of her self-respect.