When Ralph looked round on the faces of the scholars—the little faces full of mischief and curiosity, the big faces full of an expression which was not further removed than second-cousin from contempt—when when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his heart palpitated with stage-fright. There is no audience so hard to face as one of schoolchildren, as many a man has found to his cost. Perhaps it is that no conventional restraint can keep down their laughter when you do or say anything ridiculous.
Hartsook’s first day was hurried and unsatisfactory. He was not of himself, and consequently not master of anybody else. When evening came, there were symptoms of insubordination through the whole school. Poor Ralph was sick at heart. He felt that if there had ever been the shadow of an alliance between himself and Bud, it was all “off” now. It seemed to Hartsook that even Bull had lost his respect for the teacher. Half that night the young man lay awake. At last comfort came to him. A reminiscence of the death of the raccoon flashed on him like a vision. He remembered that quiet and annihilating bite which Bull gave. He remembered Bud’s certificate, that “Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can’t make him let go.” He thought that what Flat Creek needed was a bulldog. He would be a bulldog, quiet, but invincible. He would take hold in such a way that nothing should make him let go. And then he went to sleep.
In the morning Ralph got out of bed slowly. He put his clothes on slowly. He pulled on his boots in a bulldog mood. He tried to move as he thought Bull would move if he were a man. He ate with deliberation, and looked everybody in the eyes with a manner that made Bud watch him curiously. He found himself continually comparing himself with Bull. He found Bull possessing a strange fascination for him. He walked to school alone, the rest having gone on before. He entered the schoolroom preserving a cool and dogged manner. He saw in the eyes of the boys that there was mischief brewing. He did not dare sit down in his chair for fear of a pin. Everybody looked solemn. Ralph lifted the lid of his desk. “Bow-wow! wow-wow!” It was the voice of an imprisoned puppy, and the school giggled and then roared. Then everything was quiet.
The scholars expected an outburst of wrath from the teacher. For they had come to regard the whole world as divided into two classes, the teacher on the one side representing lawful authority, and the pupils on the other in a state of chronic rebellion. To play a trick on the master was an evidence of spirit; to “lick” the master was to be the crowned hero of Flat Creek district. Such a hero was Bud Means; and Bill, who had less muscle, saw a chance to distinguish himself on a teacher of slender frame. Hence the puppy in the desk.
Ralph Hartsook grew red in the face when he saw the puppy. But the cool, repressed, bulldog mood in which he had kept himself saved him. He lifted the dog into his arms and stroked him until the laughter subsided. Then, in a solemn and set way, he began:
“I am sorry,” and he looked round the room with a steady, hard eye—everybody felt that there was a conflict coming—“I am sorry that any scholar in this school could be so mean”—the word was uttered with a sharp emphasis, and all the big boys felt sure that there would be a fight with Bill Means, and perhaps with Bud—“could be so mean—as to—shut up his brother in such a place as that!”
There was a long, derisive laugh. The wit was indifferent, but by one stroke Ralph had carried the whole school to his side. By the significant glances of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of the joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, with just such a look as Bull would give a puppy, but with the utmost suavity in his voice, he said:
“William Means, will you be so good as to put this dog out of doors?”
II
A Spell Coming
There was a moment of utter stillness; but the magnetism of Ralph’s eye was too much for Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master’s look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill often wondered afterward that he had not “fit” rather than obeyed the request. But somehow he put the dog out. He was partly surprised, partly inveighed, partly awed into doing just what he had not intended to do. In the week that followed, Bill had to fight half a dozen boys for calling him “Puppy Means.” Bill said he wished he’d licked the master on the spot. ’Twould ’a’ saved five fights out of the six.
And all that day and the next, the bulldog in the master’s eye was a terror to evildoers. At the close of school on the second day Bud was heard to give it as his opinion that “the master wouldn’t be much in a tussle, but he had a heap of thunder and lightning in him.”
Did he inflict corporal punishment? inquired some philanthropic friend. Would you inflict corporal punishment if you were tiger-trainer in Van Amburgh’s happy family? But poor Ralph could never satisfy his constituency in this regard.
“Don’t believe he’ll do,” was Mr. Pete Jones’s comment to Mr. Means. “Don’t thrash enough. Boys won’t l’arn ’less you thrash ’em, says I. Leastways, mine won’t. Lay it on good is what I says to a master. Lay it on good. Don’t do no harm. Lickin’ and l’arnin’ goes together. No lickin’, no l’arnin’, says I. Lickin’ and l’arnin’, lickin’ and larnin’, is the good ole way.”
And Mr. Jones, like some wiser people, was the more pleased with his formula that it
