The Brown Mouse Part 22

"Bettina's uncle!"

"Ratherly," said the colonel jocularly, "seeing as how Bettina's Mrs.

Hansen's daughter."

Clothes are rather important, but the difference between a suit made by Atkins the tailor, and one built by Gustaf Paulsen, the new Danish craftsman, could not be supposed to be crucially important, even when designed for a very dear friend. And Jim was scarcely that--of course not!

Why, then, did the county superintendent hastily run to her room, and cry?

Why did she say to herself that the Hansens were very good people, and well-to-do, and it would be a fine thing for Jim and his mother,--and then cry some more? Colonel failed to notice Jennie's unceremonious retirement from circulation that evening, and had he known all about what took place, he would have been as mystified as you or I.

CHAPTER XVIII

JIM GOES TO AMES

The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was left struggling in the water. It was in the rapids just above the cataract--and poor Jim could not swim a stroke. Helpless, terrified, gasping, he floated to destruction, and Jennie Woodruff was not able to lift a hand to help him. To see any human being swept to such an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent to witness the drowning of one of her best--though sometimes it must be confessed most insubordinate--teachers, under such circ.u.mstances, is unspeakable; and when that teacher is a young man who was once that county superintendent's sweetheart, and falls in, clothed in a new made-to-order suit in which he looks almost handsome despite his manifest discomfort in his new cravat and starched collar, the experience is something almost impossible to endure. That is why Jennie gripped her seat until she must have scratched the varnish. That is why she felt she must go to him--and do something. She could not endure it a moment longer, she felt; and there he floated away, his poor pale face dipping below the waves, his sad, long, homely countenance sadder than ever, his lovely--yes, she must confess it now, his eyes were lovely!--his lovely blue eyes, so honest and true, wide with terror; and she unable to give him so much as a cry of encouragement!

And then Jim began to swim. He cast aside the roll of ma.n.u.script which he had held in his hand when the waters began to rise about him, and struck out for the sh.o.r.e with strong strokes--wild and agitated at first, but gradually becoming controlled and coordinated, and Jennie drew a long breath as he finally came to sh.o.r.e, breasting the waves like Triton, and master of the element in which he moved. There was a burst of applause, and people went forward to congratulate the greenhorn who had really made good.

Jennie felt like throwing her arms about his neck and weeping out her joy at his escape, and his restoration to her. Her eyes told him something of this; for there was a look in them which reminded him of fifteen years ago. Bettina Hansen was proud of him, and Con Bonner shook his hand and said that he agreed with him. Neither Bettina nor Con had noticed the capsizing of the boat or saw the form of Jim as it went drifting toward the cataract. But Jim knew how near he had been to disaster, and knew that Jennie knew. For she had seen him turn pale when he came on the platform to make his address at the farmers' meeting at Ames, had seen him begin the speech he had committed to memory, had observed how unable he was to remember it, had noted his confusion as he tried to find his ma.n.u.script, and then his place of beginning in it--and when his confusion had seemingly quite overcome him, had seen him begin talking to his audience just as he had talked to the political meeting that time when he had so deeply offended her, and had observed how he won first their respect, then their attention, then apparently their convictions.

To Jennie's agitated mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort him in his failure. His only solace was the look in Jennie's eyes.

"Young man," said an old farmer who wore thick gla.s.ses and looked like a Dutch burgomaster, "I want to have a little talk with you."

"This is Mr. Hofmyer of Pottawatomie County," said the dean of the college.

"I'm glad to meet you," said Jim. "I can talk to you now."

"No," said Jennie. "I know Mr. Hofmyer will excuse you until after dinner.

We have a little party for Mr. Irwin, and we shall be late if we don't hurry."

"Where can I see you after supper?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.

Easy it was to satisfy Mr. Hofmyer; and Jim was carried off to a dinner given by County Superintendent Jennie to Jim, the dean, Professor Withers, and one or two others--and a wonderfully select and distinguished company it seemed to Jim. Jennie seized a moment's opportunity to say, "You did beautifully, Jim; everybody says so."

"I failed!" said. Jim. "You know I failed. I couldn't remember my speech.

I can't stay here feasting. I want to get out in the snow."

"You made the best address of the meeting; and you did it because you forgot your speech," insisted Jennie.

"Does anybody else think so?"

"Why, Jim! You must learn to believe in what you have done. Even Con Bonner says it was the best. He says he didn't think you had it in ye!"

This advice from her to "believe in what you have done,"--wasn't there something new in Jennie's att.i.tude here? Wasn't his belief in what he was doing precisely the thing which had made him such a nuisance to the county superintendent? However, Jim couldn't stop to answer the question which popped up in his mind.

"What does Professor Withers say?" he asked.

"He's delighted--silly!"

"Silly!" How wonderful it was to be called "silly"--in that tone.

"I shouldn't have forgotten the speech if it hadn't been for this darned boiled s.h.i.+rt and collar, and for wearing a cravat," urged Jim in extenuation.

"You ought to 've worn them around the house for a week before coming,"

said Jennie. "Why didn't you ask my advice?"

"I will, next time, Jennie," said Jim. "I didn't suppose I needed a bitting-rig--but I guess I did!"

Jennie ran away then to ask Nils Hansen and Bettina to join their dinner party. She had a sudden access of friendliness for the Hansens. Nils refused because he was going out to see the college herds fed; but at Jennie's urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs, Bettina consented.

Jennie was very happy, and proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean devoted himself to Bettina--and Jim found out afterward that this inquiring gentleman was getting at the mental processes of a specimen pupil in one of the new kind of rural schools, in which he was only half inclined to believe. He thanked Jim for his speech, and said it was "most suggestive and thought-provoking," and as the party broke up slipped into Jim's hand a check for the honorarium. It was not until then that Jim felt quite sure that he was actually to be paid for his speech; and he felt a good deal like returning the check to the conscience fund of the State of Iowa, if it by any chance possessed such a fund. But the breach made in his financial entrenchments by the expenses of the trip and the respectable and well-fitting suit of clothes overcame his feeling of getting something for nothing. If he hadn't given the state anything, he had at least expended something--a good deal in fact--on the state's account.

CHAPTER XIX

JIM'S WORLD WIDENS

Mr. Hofmyer was waiting to give Jim the final convincing proof that he had produced an effect with his speech.

"Do you teach the kind of school you lay out in your talk?" he asked.

"I try to," said Jim, "and I believe I do."

"Well," said Mr. Hofmyer, "that's the kind of education I b'lieve in. I kep' school back in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the scholars measure things, and weigh things, and apply their studies as fur as I could."

"All good teachers have always done that," said Jim. "Froebel, Pestalozzi, Colonel Parker--they all had the idea which is at the bottom of my work; 'learn to do by doing,' and connecting up the school with life."

"M'h'm," grunted Mr. Hofmyer, "I hain't been able to see how Latin connects up with a high-school kid's life--unless he can find a Latin settlement som'eres and git a job clerkin' in a store."

"But it used to relate to life," said Jim, "the life of the people who made Greek and Latin a part of everybody else's education as well as their own. Latin and Greek were the only languages in which anything worth much was written, you know. But now"--Jim spread out his arms as if to take in the whole world--"science, the marvelous literature of our tongue in the last three centuries! And to make a child learn Latin with all that, a thousand times richer than all the literature of Latin, lying unused before him!"

"Know any Latin?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.

Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning what he knows nothing about.

"I--I have studied the grammar, and read _Caesar_," he faltered, "but that isn't much. I had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard, and it didn't go very well."

"I've had all the Latin they gave in the colleges of my time," said Mr.

Hofmyer, "if I do talk dialect; and I'll agree with you so far as to say that it would have been a crime for me to neglect the chemistry, bacteriology, physics, engineering and other sciences that pertain to farmin'--if there'd been any such sciences when I was gettin' my schoolin'."

"And yet," said Jim, "some people want us to guide ourselves by the courses of study made before these sciences existed."

"I don't, by hokey!" said Mr. Hofmyer. "I'll be dag-goned if you ain't right. I wouldn't 'a' said so before I heard that speech--but I say so now."