Madeline was a favorite with all, especially with Mr. Green, and as
the school would be small that summer, the plan struck him favorably.
Her age, however, was an objection, and he must take time to see what
others thought of a child like her becoming a schoolmistress. Others
thought well of it, and so before the close of the next day it was
generally known through Honedale, as the southern part of Devonshire
was called, that pretty little Madge Clyde had been engaged as
teacher, she receiving three dollars a week, with the understanding
that she must board herself. It did not take Madeline long to
calculate that twelve times three were thirty-six, more than a tenth
of what her grandfather must borrow. It seemed like a little fortune,
and blithe as a singing bird she flitted about the house, now stopping
a moment to fondle her pet kitten, while she whispered the good news
in its very appreciative ear, and then stroking her grandfather's
silvery hair, as she said: "You can tell them that you are sure of paying thirty-six dollars in
the fall, and if I do well, maybe they'll hire me longer. I mean to
try my very best. I wonder if ever anybody before me taught a school
when they were only fourteen and a half. Do I look as young as that?"
and for an instant the bright; childish face scanned itself eagerly in
the old-fashioned mirror, with the figure of an eagle on the top.
She did look very young, and yet there was something womanly, too, in
the expression of the face, something which said that life's realities
were already beginning to be understood by her.
"If my hair were not short I should do better. What a pity I cut it
the last time; it would have been so long and splendid now," she
continued, giving a kind of contemptuous pull at the thick, beautiful
brown hair on whose glossy surface there was in certain lights a
reddish tinge, which added to its beauty.
"Never mind the hair, Maddy," the old man said, gazing fondly at her
with a half sigh as he remembered another brown head, pillowed now
beneath the graveyard turf. "Maybe you won't pass muster, and then the
hair will make no difference. There's a new committee-man, that Dr.
Holbrook, from Boston, and new ones are apt to be mighty strict."
Instantly Maddy's face flushed all over with nervous dread, as she
thought: "What if I should fail?" fancying that to do so would be an
eternal disgrace. But she should not. She was called by everybody the
very best scholar in school, the one whom the teachers always put
forward when desirous of showing off, the one whom Mr. Tiverton, and
Squire Lamb, and Lawyer Whittemore always noticed so much. Of course
she should not fail, though she did dread Dr. Holbrook, wondering much
what he would ask her first, and hoping it would be something in
arithmetic, provided he did not stumble upon decimals, where she was
apt to get bewildered. She had no fears of grammar. She could pick out
the most obscure sentence and dissect a double relative with perfect
ease; then, as to geography, she could repeat whole pages of that,
while in the spelling-book, the foundation of a thorough education, as
she had been taught, she had no superiors, and but a very few equals.
Still she would be very glad when it was over, and she appointed
Monday, both because it was close at hand, and because that was the
day her grandfather had set in which to ride to Aikenside, in an
adjoining town, and ask its young master for the loan of three hundred
dollars.