If you simply can't have school THAT way,then you should be shut in black cells,deep under the ground,where you couldn't see,or hear a sound,and then if they'd give you a book and candle and Miss Amelia,and her right-hand man,Mister Ruler,why you might learn something.This way,if you sat and watched the windows you could see a bird cross our woods pasture to the redbird swamp every few minutes;once in a while one of my big hawks took your breath as he swept,soared,sailed,and circled,watching the ground below for rabbits,snakes,or chickens.The skinny old blue herons crossing from the Wabash to hunt frogs in the cowslip swale in our meadow,sailed so slow and so low,that you could see their sharp bills stuck out in front,their uneven,ragged looking feathers,and their long legs trailing out behind.I bet if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her spindle-shanks showed,and flew across our farm,you couldn't tell her from a heron.
There were so many songs you couldn't decide which was which to save you;it was just a pouring jumble of robins,larks,doves,blackbirds,sparrows,everything that came that early;the red and the yellow birds had not come yet,or the catbirds or thrushes.You could hear the thumping wings of the roosters in Sills'barnyard nearest the schoolhouse,and couldn't tell which was whipping,so you had to sit there and wonder;and worst of all you must stand Miss Amelia calmly telling you to pay attention to your books or you would be kept in,and all the time you were forced to bear torments,while you watched her walk from window to window to see every speck of the fight.One day they had thumped and fought for half an hour;she had looked from every window in the room,and at last there was an awful whacking,and then silence.It grew so exciting I raised my hand,and almost before she nodded permission,"Which whipped?"I asked.
Miss Amelia turned red as a beet.Gee,but she was mad!
"I did!"she said."Or at least I will.You may remain for it after school is dismissed."Now if you are going to be switched,they never do it until they are just so angry anyway,and then they always make it as hard as they dare not to stripe you,so it isn't much difference HOWprovoked they are,it will be the same old thrashing,and it's sure to sting for an hour at least,so you might as well be beaten for a little more as hardly anything at all.At that instant from the fence not far from my window came a triumphant crow that fairly ripped across the room.
"Oh,it was the Dorking!"I said."No wonder you followed clear around the room to see him thrash a Shanghai three times his size!I bet a dollar it was great!"Usually,I wouldn't have put up more than five cents,but at that time I had over six dollars from my Easter eggs,and no girl of my age at our school ever had half that much.Miss Amelia started toward me,and I braced my feet so she'd get a good jolt herself,when she went to shake me;she never struck us over the head since Laddie talked to her that first day;but John Hood's foot was in the aisle.I thought maybe I'd have him for my beau when we grew up,because I bet he knew she was coming,and stuck out his foot on purpose;anyway,she pitched,and had to catch a desk to keep off the floor,and that made her so mad at him,that she forgot me,while he got his scolding;so when my turn came at last,she had cooled down enough that she only marched past to her desk,saying I was to remain after school.I had to be careful after that to be mighty good to May and Leon.
When school was out they sat on the steps before the door and waited.Miss Amelia fussed around and there they sat.Then her face grew more gobblerish than usual,and she went out and told them to go home.Plain as anything I heard May say It:"She's been awful sick,you know,and mother wouldn't allow it."And then Leon piped up:"You DID watch the roosters,all the time they fought,and of course all of us wanted to see just as badly as you did."She told them if they didn't go right home she'd bring them back and whip them too;so they had to start,and leave me to my sad fate.I was afraid they had made it sadder,instead of helping me;she was so provoked when she came in she was crying,and over nothing but the plain truth too;if we had storied on her,she'd have had some cause to beller.She arranged her table,cleaned the board,emptied the water bucket,and closed the windows.
Then she told me I was a rude,untrained child.I was rude,I suppose,but goodness knows,I wasn't untrained;that was hard on father and mother;I had a big notion to tell them;and then,she never whipped me at all.She said if I wanted her to love me,I mustn't be a saucy,impudent girl,and I should go straight home and think it over.
I went,but I was so dazed at her thinking I wanted her to love me,that I hardly heard May and Leon calling;when I did I went to the cemetery fence and there they lay in the long grass waiting.
"If you cried,we were coming back and pitch into her,"said Leon.
There was a pointer.Next time,first cut she gave me,I decided to scream bloody murder.But that would be no Crusader way.
There was one thing though.No Crusader ever sat and heard a perfectly lovely fight going on,and never even wondered which whipped.
May and Leon stepped one on each side,took a hand,and we ran like Indians,and slid down the hill between the bushes,climbed the fence,crossed the pasture back of the church,and went to the creek.There we sat on a log,I told them,and we just laughed.I didn't know what I could do to pay them,for they saved me sure as fate that time.
