side the sordid life of
the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have
been glad to die for them--and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of
the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of
the town girls who passed about among the exhibits, she was poorly
dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that
evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a
whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of
wellbeing and happiness in Calista's soul at the feeling of her whole
clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the "boughten" cloak
she wore--and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have
understood Calista's joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson's eyes were
on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls
filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the passions
quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.

"Hello, Calista!" said Jim. "How are you enjoying it?"

"Oh!" said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. "Ah'm enjoying myse'f
right much, Mr. Jim."

"Any of the home folks coming in to see?"

"Yes, seh," answered Calista. "All the school board have stopped by this
morning."

Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his
enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his
success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps
they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a
corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among
themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He
went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had
shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a
grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie
Woodruff. When Sim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended
hand, he felt the repulsion of their attitudes and sheered off on some
pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.

They resumed their talk.

"I'm a Dimocrat," said Con Bonner, "and you fellers is Republicans, and
we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it
comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party
lines."

"The fight about the teacher," said Haakon Peterson, "is a t'ing of the
past.