The table was
tolerably well-filled, with one or two blooming damsels, and for the
rest, sun-browned country boys.
"Good morning," said the gentleman of the house, heartily. "Kalkilate
you was pretty well played out, yesterday. Don't look as if you'd stand
much hard work. You're a school teacher, I take it? Yes, I thought so. I
can generally guess at a body's business the first time trying. I ain't
one of the educated sort myself, but I've picked up a few ideas knocking
around the world. I've got some girls now, I'd like to have learn
something, but then they don't seem to take to it. I spose that kind o'
hankerin' after books comes natural to some folks, and to others it
don't. Me nor none of my family never seemed to set much store by that
sort of thing. It's a good thing to be gifted, though. There's neighbor
Green's boy, Bill, he can 'late anything after he's heerd it once, and
when there's any doins' of any kind comin' off, they send him so he can
tell the rest, after he gets home, all what happened. But, as I said
before, it's more'n any of the rest of us can do.
"And, to tell the truth, we don't need to be as wise as Solomon, here in
these parts, to be as good as the best. When a man gets what you may
call a little forehanded, he's bound to have his say about matters and
things, whether he understands them or not. I rather guess, too, Miss,"
he added, good-naturedly, "if you stay long enough round here, you'll
git to teachin' one scholar. There ain't many old maids around here, but
there's any quantity of nice, industrious young men what want wives, and
ain't a goin' far for to find them, eh, girls?"
There was a good deal of tittering at this last remark, and the
aforementioned youths blushed to the tips of their ears.
"What singular people I have got among," thought Clemence, who could not
refrain from laughing at their oddity. "What a strange fate has thrown
me among them?"
She was destined to learn a good deal more of their singularities,
during her prolonged sojourn at the little village. A country school
teacher, having to "board round," has a good chance to study human
nature.
Before she had been long at her new occupation, she found that she was
expected to be, literally, "as wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a
dove." There was no subject--religion or politics not excepted--which
she was not expected thoroughly to understand and expound; she was
evidently considered, from her position, as
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