me he had gained
the school-room and grabbed both the pointer and the stove poker, the
little girl had scrambled upon her pinto and galloped off toward the
farm-house.

The teacher did not give chase, but, sputtering revenge under his
breath, called the school to order. Then, not forgetting what severity
is due insubordination where the sons of salary-supplying fathers are
concerned, he gave the boys who had fought, but who were now docile and
smiling, a mighty tongue-lashing.

When the little girl was beyond hailing distance or possibility of
capture, she brought the pinto to a standstill and looked back. Once she
opened her lips as if to say something, but closed them again, and,
after waiting until the scholars had all gone in, rode on. She did not
go home; instead, when she came in sight of the reservation road, she
turned east and cantered across the prairie until only the top of the
farm-house was visible to her as she sat upon her horse. Then she
dismounted, tethered the pinto, made Luffree lie down, and, having taken
the magazine from under the saddle-blankets, cuddled against the dog.
She was still trembling, her throat ached with unspoken anger, and,
underneath her apron, her heart bounded so that the checks moved in
regular time.

But soon she wiped her blurred eyes and turned to the pictures in the
magazine. They began with a red-brown one of a storm-tossed ship on a
rocky coast; and, following, were drawings of queer boxes and chairs
and, yet more strange, of a herd of grazing cattle _with a board fence
around it_! There was also a funny picture of a ragged boy and a stylish
little girl who wore a round hat and a polonaise. And, lastly, there was
shown a beautiful young woman standing by a table in a long, loose robe,
very much like the army chaplain's.

It was over this picture that the little girl bent longest, and she
read, not without some tedious spelling, the words that were printed
beneath it:

"Mary, in cap and gown, was so bright and dainty a vision that the
professor wished that more young ladies of gentle birth might attend the
college."

College! It was not a new word to the little girl, for she had heard the
colonel tell her mother that he was going to send his son to college.
But now she knew that girls as well as boys could go. And she saw by the
picture that they wore beautiful flowing robes and square caps.

It was the cap that specially attracted her, for it rested becomingly
upo