# McClure's Magazine/Volume 9/Number 3/The Grindstone Question

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McClure's Magazine, Vol 9, July 1897
THE GRINDSTONE QUESTION.
by Robert Barr
Author of "The Face and the Mask," "In the Midst of Alarms," etc.
OLD Monro's general store was supposed to contain everything that a human being might require. The shelves on the right-hand side as you entered were filled with all kinds of groceries, canned goods, spices, and so forth, not to mention glass jars containing brilliantly colored candies, the envy of all the children in the place, which made the boys resolve that when they grew up they would be grocers: an aspiration augmented by bags of hazel nuts and boxes of raisins placed just beyond the reach of a long arm. On the counter at this side stood a big pair of scales by means of which the various commodities were weighed. What rested under the counter nobody exactly knew; it was an unknown land, into which the grocer or his assistant dived, bringing to light sugar, coffee, tea, or almost anything that was called for, with something of the mystery that surrounds a conjurer when he develops an unexpected omelette from a silk hat.
On the public side of the counter were ranged barrels of nails, for the most part, which served as seats for lazy customers or loiterers about the store, while at the same time the contents of the barrels did not offer the temptation to purloiners that soda crackers or nuts might have done. On the left-hand side of the store were bolts of cloth for men and women, chiefly for the latter; and instead of scales being on that counter, there were brass-headed nails driven on the inside edge of it, that measured a yard, half a yard, quarter of a yard, and so forth, enabling the deft assistant to run off speedily the length required, snip it at the exact spot with the little scissors from his vest pocket, and then, with an ear-satisfying rip, tear the cloth across.
Sam, the assistant, was easily the leading man of the place, for he understood the mysteries of bookkeeping and he arrayed himself with the gorgeousness which no young man of the neighborhood could hope to emulate, as Sam had the resources of this emporium at his command, getting neckties and other necessaries at wholesale prices.
Old Monro himself was rather a tough-looking, gnarled individual, who paid little attention to dress, as often as not serving his customers in his shirt-sleeves, and was thus thought by the youth of the village to underestimate his privileges, although the lumbermen rather envied him his run of the tobacco-box, where the black plugs lay tightly wedged together and had to be dislodged by a blunt chisel. Old Munro chewed tobacco continually, and all he had to do when one plug was exhausted was to go to the box and take out another: surely a most entrancing prerogative.
The young man who now stood before the counter in the public part of the store seemed somewhat incongruous in such a place. He was dressed neatly, and in what was referred to with some contempt as "city style," which dwellers in the country naturally despised. His carefully-tied scarf, instead of being like Joseph's coat, of many colors, and those all flaming, was of one quiet hue; and the disdain with which Sam contemplated him was tinctured uneasily by the feeling that perhaps, after all, this was the correct thing, although it made such little show.
Old Monro's thoughts, however, were not on dress. Nevertheless, he regarded the young man before him with a look in which pity was the predominant element, Monro was not now acting in his capacity of store-keeper, but in his rôle of school trustee, one of three, and the chief one, who had the management of the educational interests of Pineville. Russell Copford, who had applied for the position of teacher in the Pineville school, had some expectation that his scholastic attainments were to be critically looked into, but this was not the case.
"Do you think you can lick the big boys?" asked old Monro. "They're a tough lot; ain't they, Sam?"
"You bet!" replied Sam.
"I'm not a believer in corporal punishment," said young Copford, "and I hope to be able to manage the school without it."
"Don't believe in licking?" cried old ​Monro, with evident doubt of the applicant's fitness for the post. "What do you think of that, Sam?"
"Don't think much of it," said Sam.
"No more do I," replied Monro. "I don't see how you can run a school without the gad."
"Well," said the young man reflectively, with the air of one who has an open mind on all subjects, "I hope to interest the pupils so much in what I have to teach them, that punishment will not be necessary; but if it is necessary I shall not hesitate to employ it."
The old man laughed, with an inward chuckle of enjoyment rather than any outward demonstration of merriment.
"Let's see, Sam," he said; "is it three teachers they've run out of this section?"
"Four, I think," said Sam.
"Well, it's either three or four. Yes, I guess it was four. My boy licked three of them, I think, and Waterman's boy he knocked out the other. Billy Waterman and our Tom they're pretty hard seeds; aren't they, Sam?"
"They're a tough lot," said Sam impartially.
"Yes," continued the old man, his mind apparently running back over the past and bringing strict impartiality to bear on his retrospect, "we've had a good deal of trouble with our teachers. The fact is, we don't hardly know what to do with the school; do we, Sam?"
"No, we don't," said Sam.
"Our boys don't seem to take to learning, and when the teacher puts on any airs with them, they up and lick him. One of the teachers brought an action for assault and battery. Let's see," continued Monro, meditatively, "was it against Billy Waterman, or against our Tom?"
"It was against Tom," said Sam.
"I expect it was. Anyhow, the magistrate said that if the teacher didn't know how to run the school, he wasn't there to learn him, and so he dismissed the case. That's why I want to warn you, for it ain't no picnic to run our school; is it, Sam?"
"No, it ain't," agreed Sam.
"Why, some years ago we tried, as a sort of experiment, how a woman teacher would do. She was a mighty pretty, nice little girl; wasn't she, Sam?"
"Yes, she was," replied Sam, fervently, adjusting his rainbow necktie.
"Well, I guess she'd 'a' got on all right if she hadn't been so mighty particular. She was going to correct Billy Waterman for drawing pictures on his slate instead of ciphering, and Billy he just up and took her in his arms and kissed her, and then the girl she sat down at her desk and cried fit to kill, and resigned the school. I told old Waterman Billy oughtn't to have done it, and he allowed it wasn't just right, but he ain't got much control over Billy, no more'n I have over Tom; have I, Sam?"
"Tom does run a little wild," admitted Sam.
"I don't mind your having the situation, Mr. Copford," said old Monro, impartially, "but if the boys turn round and thrash you, don't come whining here to me, because, you see, I've warned you; haven't I, Sam?"
"You have," said Sam.
"That is all right," replied Copford, with a twinkle in his eye. "But on the other hand, Mr. Monro, if they bring Tom home some day on a shutter, don't blame me.
The old man threw back his head and laughed.
"Well, youngster," he said, "you've got some spunk, although you don't look it. That's the way I like to hear a fellow talk, but you ain't seen our Tom yet; has he, Sam?"
"No," replied Sam, emphatically, "he hasn't."
And so, with little formality, it was arranged that Russell Copford should teach the public school at Pineville.
The young man turned away from the general store and walked up the sawdust street of the village with anything but a light heart. For one who had had an education in a great university and who had spent a year in Paris studying art, it was indeed an appalling thing to be condemned for an unknown length of time to teach a backwoods school in America. Sudden financial disaster had overwhelmed his father and brothers, who were in business, but who, nevertheless, looked into the future with confidence and hoped to retrieve their former position. But meanwhile Russell had to do the best he could for himself, and hope for better times; and when a young man in America does not know what to do, he plays trumps and tackles school teaching—that stepping-stone for lawyers, clergymen, and professional men of all sorts, and even presidents.
The town was built of pine, it smelt of pine, it lived on pine, and the resinous, healthful odor of pine pervaded every corner of it. The droning roar of the ​circular saws eating their way through pine logs filled the air, accentuated by the shriller scream of the glittering buzz-saws revolving with such incredible swiftness as they edged the boards that they seemed to stand still, and were, as the proverb says, not healthy to "monkey" with.
The population of Pineville were all connected either directly or indirectly with the lumber industry, and the children whom Copford was supposed to teach could hardly be expected to have the manners of Vere de Vere. It was also quite evident that the chief man interested in the progress of the school regarded the assaulting of a teacher by one of the big boys as rather a joke than otherwise.
Young Copford set his teeth rather firmly as he walked up the sawdust street of the place. Monro had given him the keys of the schoolhouse—a large key for the outer door and a smaller one for the school-master's desk, tied together by a string—and with these jingling in his pocket, he sought the temple of learning.
The schoolhouse stood alone, some distance outside of the village, and was a rough, unpainted structure, with a well-trodden playground surrounding it, and not a plant, tree, or any living green thing anywhere near it. On entering, Copford found a large room with a platform at one end, on which stood a desk. There was a blackboard along the wall behind the desk, while some very tattered colored maps hung at the farther end of the room. The school furniture was of the rudest possible kind, evidently built by the carpenter who had erected the schoolhouse. A broad desk of plank ran round three walls, on benches before which the elder children undoubtedly sat. In the center of the room were movable benches, without desks in front of them, which seemed to indicate that the greater portion of the pupils were still studying the useful, but not particularly advanced, alphabet.
On Monday morning the school began at nine, and about a quarter before that hour Copford appeared, and saw for the first time the thirty or forty boys and girls, of all ages and sizes, whom he was to instruct. He had little difficulty, even before he asked the pupils their names, in distinguishing Tom Monro and Billy Waterman; they were the two biggest boys in the school, and Monro had the shrewd, humorous look of his father, with the added air of truculence which comes to a boy who is the acknowledged boss of the school, not to speak of the unusual record of having thrashed three teachers. His closely cropped, bullet head showed him to be a combative, stubborn person who would not be easy to coerce or persuade. On the other hand, Billy Waterman was a surprise. As Copford looked at him, he could hardly credit the fact that he also had a teacher's scalp at his belt, although he could quite readily believe he had picked up a schoolmistress and kissed her.
Billy was a dreamy-eyed, poetic-looking young fellow, robust enough, but not at all one who might be finally placed in the category of hopelessly bad boys. There was no question, however, but Tom Monro would prove a match, if it came to fisticuffs, for nearly any teacher in the State.
Copford was amazed to see among his pupils nearly half a dozen girls who would have been classed as young ladies anywhere else. One in particular was exceedingly pretty, and she modestly told him, when he asked, that her name was Priscilla Willard. Copford was quick to see that he was going to have little trouble so far as the girls were concerned, for before the day was over it was quite palpable that they all liked him; but he had his doubts whether this preference would make his way smoother with the boys, especially with those whom he might, without exaggeration, have termed young men.
The first week passed with nothing particular to distinguish its progress, and Copford found his elder pupils further advanced than he expected, especially in arithmetic, which the parents thought a more practical branch of education than such comparatively ornamental departments as geography and grammar. Copford also, to his amazement, realized that he liked his new profession. Children generally are filled with such eager curiosity that it is a man's own fault if he fails to interest them; and Copford's methods were a continual surprise to his pupils. He actually laughed if a boy, expecting a thrashing, made a joke at his expense; and then he told them stories to which they listened with wide-open eyes. For the first time in their lives geography became a living thing to them, for the wonderful young man before them had actually visited many of the places which were to them but names on the map, and he often gave them thrilling accounts of adventures he had had in this foreign city or the other,
"'I DON'T MIND YOUR HAVING THE SITUATION. . . . BUT IF THE BOYS TURN ROUND AND THRASH YOU, DON'T COME WHINING HERE TO ME.'"
The gauntlet was first flung down by Billy Waterman. One day in the second week, Copford had returned to school after having had dinner, and seated himself at his desk. The stillness that reigned was unnatural and oppressive. He saw something was wrong, but could not tell what it was. The fair head of Priscilla was bent over her desk, but there was an expression of intense indignation on her brow, Waterman and Monro were exhibiting an industry over their slates that was more than usually ominous. One of the very small boys in the front A-B-C row giggled in a sudden manner that indicated previous suppression of his feelings, and then tried to choke off his ill-timed merriment by burying his mouth in his hands, a look of intense fear coming into his eyes.
"Well, Peter," said Copford, genially, "what is the fun about? I don't think you should keep it to yourself, if the joke is as good as all that."
"It's on the blackboard, master," said the frightened boy, in a hysterical gurgle between a laugh and a cry.
Copford turned his head and saw on the blackboard an exceedingly clever caricature of himself, drawn in white chalk. The exaggerated likeness was obvious, and the malicious intent equally so. The master rose to his feet, turned his back upon the school, and gazed for a few moments on the caricature, while an intense quiet reigned in the room. Finally he turned and said:
"Who drew that picture?"
There was no reply. Billy Waterman, turning a trifle pale about the lips, bent his head over his slate. No pupil gave the slightest indication of the culprit, but Tom Monro looked directly at the master with an expression that said, "Now we'll see how much grit he's got."
"Well, Master Waterman," said Copford, easily, "if I had drawn a picture as clever as that, I shouldn't be ashamed to own it."
"Who said I drew it?" muttered Billy, truculently, not going to be caught by such chaff as that.
"Who says it? I say it."
"Oh, do you?" remarked Billy, menacingly. "Well, what else have you got to say about it?"
"I'm not going to say," replied the master. "I'm going to do."
"Well, what are you going to do?" cried Billy, throwing one leg over the bench on which he sat, and turning from the wall, so that he might be ready for either attack or defence.
Priscilla looked up in alarm, her face pale, gazing beseechingly at the master, as if to warn him of his danger.
"What am I going to do?" said the teacher. "Now if you will all pay attention for a moment, I'll show you. You see this picture; it is a very good caricature of myself, but just watch me add a few lines to it."
Copford took up the white finger of the chalk crayon, and gave a touch to the blackboard, near the eye of the figure, then drew a swift line or two about the mouth, a dab here and a dab there, and stood back quickly, so that all might see the result of his work. An instantaneous roar broke out from the school—a roar of laughter. The result on the board was the dead image of the master, with a comicality added to his expression that was simply irresistible. Billy Waterman gazed with dropped jaw and incredulous, wide-open eyes at the picture,
"Well, I swan!" he cried, unconscious that he was speaking.
The master turned again to the blackboard, and after a few strokes, very rapidly accomplished, stood back again, and exhibited to their wondering eyes a picture of Billy himself as he gazed with open mouth at the result. And now the children applauded as if they were at a theatre. No such expertness had they ever seen even at the most interesting show which had heretofore visited the town. Copford picked up the woolly brush used for cleaning the blackboard, and was about to obliterate the result of his labors, when Billy Waterman arrested his hand by crying out, entreatingly:
"Oh, master, don't blot it out."
"Very well," said the teacher. "We will let it stay there for the remainder of the afternoon; but I hope none of the trustees will come in and see what we have been doing. I think, however, we will shorten up one or two of the classes, and thus get time for me to teach you a little about drawing. It is a most interesting study, and I believe I can give you some hints that will be useful."
Russell Copford knew from that hour ​onward Billy Waterman was his slave. The young fellow's dreamy eyes followed him wherever he went, quite undisturbed by the sneers of Tom Monro, who had no sympathy with such foolishness.
The teacher had all the pupils with him now, bar one. Tom Monro was not clever in any line, except in the single subject of arithmetic; and although Copford frequently praised the celerity with which the lad solved difficult problems, yet the intended flattery made no impression upon Tom's hard, bullet head. There came into the young man's eyes, on these occasions, a lowering look, which said as plainly as words, "You can't soft solder me."
One evening, after school had been dismissed, Copford sat at his desk, writing in the head-lines of the copy-books, for this was before the days of Spencerian copper-plate head-lines, and it was the teacher's duty to inscribe carefully at the top of the page such innocent expressions as: "Many men of many minds, many birds of many kinds," which gave the pupil working on the letter M a sufficient quantity down the page of both capital and small script M's to inure his hand to its intricacies. Tom Monro had been more than usually sullen that day, and although it was evident the cloud would soon break, yet impending disaster did not trouble the mind of the teacher. There arose, instead, between his eye and the page, the fair comely head of Priscilla, and he wondered to find such a flower of sweetness and light in a rough mill town. He took up her copy-book and looked long at the pretty, accurate, round hand, the letters of which were formed even better than he could write them himself. Then he did something that was exceedingly unlike what we might expect from a grave pedagogue, and which would have amazed his pupils had they sat in that empty room. He raised the copy-book to his lips for one brief moment, and, as he did so, was startled by a timid knock at the inside door.
"Come in," he cried, the color mounting to his cheeks.
The door opened, as one might say, timorously, and there he saw Priscilla herself standing before him, her smooth cheeks flushed like a lovely sunset, as if she had been running, her hand trembling as she held the knob of the door.
"Oh, master," she cried, breathlessly, "please do not give us the grindstone question to-morrow!"
"The grindstone question?" repeated Copford with rising inflection, not understanding what she meant, then adding with softened voice: "Come in, Priscilla."
But the girl still stood on the doorstep, which communicated with the outside closed porch that shielded her from view had any one been passing, a most unlikely event, for the schoolhouse stood in a lonely situation.
"Four men, A, B, C, D," said the girl, hurriedly, "bought a grindstone four feet in diameter, and each agreed to grind off his share. How many inches should A, B, C, and D grind off respectively?"
"What an idiotic way of buying a grindstone!" said Copford, laughing and advancing towards her, but the girl shrunk against the door. The young man seeing her timidity, stopped in his approach, and added, a shade of tenderness unconsciously mellowing his voice:
"Won't you come in, Priscilla? I have never tried the grindstone question, but I think I can manage it. I will work it out on the blackboard here. If you sit down I will explain it as I go along."
"Oh, it isn't that!" cried Priscilla, with an anxious note in her voice. "I can do the question as it is done in the book, although I am afraid I don't understand it very well; but what I wanted to tell you is, that Tom Monro does it in another way and gets the correct answer. He is very stubborn, and refuses to do it in the way the book says it should be done. Then there is trouble—and—and—"
"And Tom thrashes the teacher?" supplemented Copford, inquiringly.
"Yes, sir," replied Priscilla, blushing deeply, her eyes on the floor. "The smaller children are frightened, and they cry, and we all sit here helpless. It makes me feel how uncivilized we are, and if it ever happens again, I shall never return to school."
"Ah, Priscilla, that would be cruel; I should not care to teach if you were not here. If the good pupils desert," he added quickly, seeing the look of alarm that came into her face, with a movement indicative of retreat, "and leave the teacher alone with the bad, then are the innocent punished, while the guilty are triumphant. So you want me to avoid the grindstone question to-morrow?"
"Yes, please."
"'WELL, TOMMY, MY BOY,' SAID THE TEACHER, 'WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE GLOVES?'"
the former teachers show Tom Monro where he was wrong in his solution?"
"They knew he was wrong, because he refused to do it the way it was done in the arithmetic."
"Oh, I think that was entirely to his credit," said the schoolmaster, frankly; "always supposing that his solution is not an arbitrary one and can be explained step by step."
Copford went to his desk and picked up a volume which treated of arithmetic, running the pages past his thumb and examining the book here and there. Without looking up, he said quietly:
"I can't find the grindstone question; where is it?"
"I'll show you," replied the girl, innocently, advancing and taking the book from his hand.
"There it is," she added, pointing out the knotty problem. The schoolmaster looked at it critically. Underneath the question itself, on the same page, was the solving of it in plain figures; the compiler of the book evidently thinking that his grindstone question might perhaps baffle the teachers themselves, which indeed was the case, for most of them clung to that solution as an inebriate man clings to a lamp-post, afraid to move away from it.
The schoolmaster apparently examined the unraveling of the problem with knitted brow.
"Well," he said at last, closing the book, "I will spend a little time with this question privately, and see if there is any other method of solving it. When you entered, Priscilla, I was just examining your copy-book. Here it is, you see, open on my desk, and I have come to the con​conclusion that you write much better than I do myself, so it seems rather useless for me to set you any more head-lines. I could not help thinking what silly mottoes and adages the pupils are made to transcribe. Just notice the inanity of the page you have been doing. 'Many men of many minds, many birds of many kinds.' Could anything be more futile! Now, as the next page begins with N, I have picked out a line for you, and I am going to ask you to write it yourself."
The girl laughed, and sat in his chair, taking his pen in her hand and placing the copy-book before her. Copford turned the pages of a small volume which lay open on his desk, and read the line:
"‘Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others.’"
"That is a beautiful line," she said, as she finished writing it.
"Yes," he answered, "and it looks more beautiful now that your pen has traced it. Do you know to whom it refers?"
'No, I never heard it before," she said, gently shaking her head.
"Then listen to the lines that go with it:
"‘Truly, Priscilla,' he said, 'when I see you spinning and spinning, Never idle a moment but thrifty and thoughtful of others, Suddenly you are transformed or visibly changed in a moment; No longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner.'
"Which I will amend by calling you Priscilla the beautiful writer."
"It is Longfellow, is it not?" she asked. "There is a part of 'Evangeline' in our text-book, and it reads like that."
"Yes, this is one of Longfellow's poems, and the one I like most of all. I wish you would let me give you this book for you to keep in remembrance of the time you warned me. Here, I shall write on the fly-leaf:
"‘Priscilla, thoughtful of others.’"
"Oh, I must go," she cried, a tumult rising in her heart, but she took the book and hurriedly thanked him.
He held her hand for a moment, his whole impulse being to draw her toward him and treat her as he had treated her copy-book, but he had mercy on her diffident modesty and restrained his impulse, hoping selfishly that a future reward would wait on his self-restraint, which it undoubtedly did; but with that we have nothing to do, for this story does not extend to the courtship and marriage of Russell Copford and Priscilla Willard; it deals with war, and not with love.
Next day Copford announced in the school that he would postpone the arithmetic class until the morrow, and would give them a lesson in drawing instead, This proclamation did not appear to gratify Tom Monro, although it filled the rest of the school with delight. Tom had prepared himself for the sequel to the inevitable grindstone question, and he did not care to have the contest postponed; so he sat sullenly in his place, paying no attention to the brilliant art display which the teacher exhibited on the blackboard by means of various colored chalk crayons,
When school was dismissed at four o'clock, Copford said to Tom Monro: "I want you to wait until the others have gone."
"What for?" asked Tom, gruffly.
"I have something to show you," replied the master.
"I don't know that I care about seeing it," said Tom, rudely. "I get enough schoolmastering from nine till four. I've got other things to do after school's out. If you think I'm interested in drawing, you're mistaken."
"I can see that you are not interested in drawing," said Copford, mildly, "and I am not going to speak to you about it; so you need have no fears on that score. The fact is, Tom, I want you to do me a favor. I haven't had any exercise since I came to this place, and I want to limber up a little, if I may put it that way. There, now, the last lingerer has gone, and we are alone."
Copford opened his desk and drew from the inside two pairs of boxing-gloves, which, closing the desk, he placed upon the lid.
"Have you ever seen wearing apparel of that nature before?" he inquired,
"No," said Tom, interested in spite of himself. "What are they for?"
"They are boxing-gloves. I am very fond of boxing, and used to be rather good at it, so it struck me you might oblige me by giving me the chance of a little exercise. I should say from your build that you ought to make a fair fighter, if you know how to use your strength."
Tom's eyes lit up with the flame of lust of combat.
"Nobody that ever stood up to me ever any complaint to make that I didn't know how to fight," he said. "But I fight with my fists; I don't see the use of them things."
​"These," said the master, "are very useful for deadening a blow, and yet you can give pretty good hard licks with them."
"I fight with my fists," persisted Tom, "and I don't care to have them swathed in pillows, no matter what the other fellow might think."
"Well," said Copford, genially, "you can't expect me to go round town with a black eye and a swollen nose, can you? And yet I have known such gloves to close up a man's eye. Here, help me to place these benches out of the way."
Tom went to work with a will, and in a few minutes the whole central portion of the schoolroom was clear.
"Now I'll tie on the gloves for you," said Copford, which he did, afterwards putting on his own.
Tom swung round his arms, with the unaccustomed pillows, as he called them, at the ends of them.
"I don't like these things a little bit," he said. "They seem to me clumsy. I don't see how anybody can do anything with them."
"I knew I should interest you," said the teacher. "That was why I asked you to wait. Now, smite me with one of them. But, I say, Tom, you mustn't stand like that, or you'll get knocked over before you know where you are. Put your foot forward as you see me doing."
"Look here, master," said Tom pugnaciously, "you stand as you like, and I'll do the same, and be very thankful if you can stand at all when I get through with you."
"All right," replied the teacher, "but remember I have warned you. Now hit out, and let us see what you can do."
Tom lunged forward and had his blow parried. Again and again he tried to strike the young man, who seemed to stand so carelessly before him, yet whose arm was ever ready to nullify the most powerful blow he had to offer. The harder Tom worked the angrier he got. Thinking he was impeded by the hand-gear, he denounced the gloves.
"These are no good," he roared. "Even if I could hit you, it wouldn't amount to anything. You take the gloves off, and I'll show you what we're here for."
Hitherto Copford had merely stood on the defensive, but now that the gloves were maligned he shouted out to his opponent:
"Look out for yourself; I'll show you whether they are so innocent as you seem to think."
Tom rushed in where angels would have had good reason to fear to tread, and received an unexpected shoulder blow straight in the face that staggered him. Whereupon he roared once more and came in again; but this time the teacher, with a swinging movement, hit him such a stinging blow on the ear that sent Tom over and down in a heap on the floor.
"Get up!" cried Copford with ringing voice. "Why, bless me, I'm ashamed of you! I never saw anybody so useless with his fists as you are. It reminds me of fighting a cow."
Tom sprang to his feet, his face ablaze with rage at the insult, and rushed at his antagonist with the impetuosity of a mad bull, receiving a blow in the jaw that would undoubtedly have floored him, if, as he went over, he had not encountered a left-hander on the other ear, that restored his equilibrium.
"That's Christian," shouted the master, who was getting tolerably excited. "When you are smitten on one cheek, you turn the other. Of all helpless infants, I never saw the like of you."
Tom put down his head like a belligerent ram, and drove blindly at his adversary, receiving a body blow in the breast that not only straightened him up, but took every atom of breath from him; and then came swift oblivion, for there descended full in his face the most appalling impact ever experienced outside the prize-ring, and Tom's heels went up, and the back of his head came down like a sledge-hammer on the floor, where he lay.
When Tom opened his eyes, he saw standing above him the master, with a cynical smile on his lips, his gloved hands resting on his hips. It seemed to Tom that he spoke in a far-off voice, for his head was spinning, and he felt a strange weakness and unwonted timidity creeping over him. He had a dazed idea that he had been fighting a thunder-storm and had got struck by lightning.
"Well, Tommy, my boy," said the teacher, "what's the matter with the gloves?"
"They're all right, I suppose," replied Tom, weakly.
He raised himself slowly to his elbow, then put his hand to his head, and finding the glove still on, looked at that as if he had not seen it before.
"THE MASTER ROSE, AND PLACED HIS HAND ON TOM'S SHOULDER. 'BOYS AND GIRLS,' HE SAID TO THE CLASS, 'WE HAVE HERE A BORN MATHEMATICIAN.'"
feeling very unsure of their stability, "if you are tired of the gloves, and want to take to the naked fists, I am ready to accommodate you. Your father said he wouldn't grumble if I sent you home on a shutter. So we will take off the gloves, if you don't mind, and see if you can do any better with bare fists."
"Well, master," said Tom, "I guess I know when I've had enough."
"Are you sure you have had enough, Master Monro? I don't want any mistake to creep in, and as your skull is pretty thick, I want to feel certain I have got an idea or two into it. If you will just stand up to me once more, and let me get an upper cut under your chin, I can promise you a sensation that will make you think your head has come off. Do you want to experience it?"
"No, thank you," said Tom, humbly.
"Very well, then. Now I am going to talk to you in a straight and friendly manner. This, although you may not think ​it, is really an amicable meeting, because I didn't want to be compelled to hit you some day in school with my ungloved fist. I want to say to you that I think it is an ungentlemanly thing for a young man like you to fight or propose fighting in the presence of girls and little children. I therefore wanted you to have an entirely satisfactory measurement of your strength against my skill here alone this evening, and if you are not thoroughly convinced that you are a helpless infant as far as your fists are concerned, I shall be glad to renew the contest at once, either with or without gloves. But I warn you that if you try any of your capers with me in school, there will be but one blow struck, and you will get it. Furthermore, you will get it squarely in the face, and you won't be able to leave your bed for a month after. Ever since I came here you have been acting in high and mighty sulkiness, strutting round as if you were really a bully, whereas you are as soft as a feather bed. I am not going to stand it any longer. I am going to teach this school, and you are going to be a mighty civil pupil; do you understand that?"
"I think you are pretty hard on me, master," said Tom, nearly whimpering.
"I am not; but I want a fair and square understanding, and I want to have it now. I'll treat you in school with the greatest respect, and you must treat me in the same way. When I say, 'Thomas, I want you to stay after the rest are gone,' you are not to growl, 'What for?' You are to say, cheerfully, 'Yes, sir.’"
"I'll do it, master," said Tom. "You are a man, you are, and I never went to a man's school before."
"All right," said Copford, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his truculent pupil. "There is no more to be said, and I won't mention this little contest if you don't. So, now, good-night."
Next day the arithmetic class was called, and ranged itself along the front benches before the master's desk. Tom Monro was at the head of the class, for he was a good mathematician; and Priscilla, near the middle, looked with alarm when the master's sonorous voice rang out with the words: "Four men, A, B, C, and D, bought a grindstone four feet in diameter. Each ground off his share. How many inches did A, B, C, and D grind respectively?"
For a few moments the silence was broken only by the scribbling of pencil on slate, and then one by one the slates were piled on the desk in front of the master, When all were in place except the two belonging to the inefficient couple at the foot of the class, who admitted their inability to do the grinding, even when their books showed them how it should be done, the master turned over the slates, and took up the first, which was that of Tom Monro. There was an anxious stillness in the room.
"Thomas," said the teacher, "you have not solved this problem as it is done in your text-book. Do you know how to do it as the text-book gives it?"
"Yes-sir."
"Then take the chalk and go to the blackboard and solve it as the text-book solves it."
Without a word Tom Monro went to the blackboard and worked out the problem at it was done in the book.
"Now," said Copford, "show the class your own way of doing it; then take the pointer and explain, step by step, what you have done."
When this was accomplished, Tom stood patiently before the blackboard, awaiting the next order.
The master rose, and placed his hand on Tom's shoulder.
"Boys and girls," he said to the class, "we have here a born mathematician; and speaking for myself, I like Tom's solution better than the one given in the book. So, Thomas, we will here shake hands on the grindstone question, and tell your father, when you go home, that he has every reason to be proud of you; and, furthermore, that your teacher and the school are proud of you."
Big as he was, the tears came suddenly into Tom's eyes, which even the drubbing of the night before had not brought forth. He tried to speak, gulped, then taking his slate, walked silently to his place at the head of the class.