Suddenly Royal was gone, the candle was not there, and Mother was calling from the foot of the stairs:
“Almanzo! What’s the matter? Be you sick? It’s five o’clock!”
He crawled out, shivering. He pulled on his trousers and waist, and ran downstairs to button up by the kitchen stove. Father and Royal had gone to the barns. Almanzo took the milk-pails and hurried out. The night seemed very large and still, and the stars sparkled like frost in the black sky.
When the chores were done and he came back with Father and Royal to the warm kitchen, breakfast was almost ready. How good it smelled! Mother was frying pancakes and the big blue platter, keeping hot on the stove’s hearth, was full of plump brown sausage cakes in their brown gravy.
Almanzo washed as quickly as he could, and combed his hair. As soon as Mother finished straining the milk, they all sat down and Father asked the blessing for breakfast.
There was oatmeal with plenty of thick cream and maple sugar. There were fried potatoes, and the golden buckwheat cakes, as many as Almanzo wanted to eat, with sausage
s and gravy or with butter and maple syrup. There were preserves and jams and jellies and doughnuts. But best of all Almanzo liked the spicy apple pie, with its thick, rich juice and its crumbly crust. He ate two big wedges of the pie.
Then, with his cap’s warm ear-muffs over his ears, and his muffler wrapped up to his nose, and the dinner-pail in his mittened hand, he started down the long road to another day at school.
He did not want to go. He did not want to be there when the big boys thrashed Mr. Corse. But he had to go to school because he was almost nine years old.
Chapter 4
Surprise
Every day at noon the wood-haulers came down Hardscrabble Hill, and the boys hitched their sleds to the bobsleds’ runners and rode away down the road. But they went only a little way, and came back in time. Only Big Bill Ritchie and his friends didn’t care how soon Mr. Corse tried to punish them.
One day they were gone until after recess. When they came tramping into the schoolhouse they all grinned impudently at Mr. Corse. He waited until they were in their seats. Then he stood up, pale, and he said:
“If this occurs again, I shall punish you.”
Everybody knew what would happen next day. When Royal and Almanzo reached home that night, they told Father. Almanzo said it wasn’t fair. Mr. Corse wasn’t big enough to fight even one of those big boys, and they would all jump on him at once.
“I wish I was big enough to fight ’em!” he said.
“Son, Mr. Corse hired out to teach the school,” Father answered. “The school trustees were fair and aboveboard with him; they told him what he was undertaking. He undertook it. It’s his job, not yours.”
“But maybe they’ll kill him!” Almanzo said.
“That’s his business,” said Father. “When a man undertakes a job, he has to stick to it till he finishes it. If Corse is the man I think he is, he’d thank nobody for interfering.”
Almanzo couldn’t help saying again: “It isn’t fair. He can’t fight all five of them.”
“I wouldn’t wonder if you’d be surprised, son,” Father said. “Now you boys get a hustle on; these chores can’t wait all night.”
So Almanzo went to work and did not say any more.
All next morning, while he sat holding up his primer, he could not study. He was dreading what was going to happen to Mr. Corse. When the primer class was called, he could not read the lesson. He had to stay in with the girls at recess, and he wished he could lick Bill Ritchie.
At noon he went out to play, and he saw Mr. Ritchie, Bill’s father, coming down the hill on his loaded bobsled. All the boys stood where they were and watched Mr. Ritchie. He was a big, rough man, with a loud voice and a loud laugh. He was proud of Bill because Bill could thrash school-teachers and break up the school.
Nobody ran to fasten a sled behind Mr. Ritchie’s bobsled, but Bill and the other big boys climbed up on his load of wood. They rode, loudly talking, around the bend of the road and out of sight. The other boys did not play any more; they stood and talked about what would happen.
When Mr. Corse rapped on the window, they went in soberly and soberly sat down.
That afternoon nobody knew the lessons. Mr. Corse called up class after class, and they lined up with their toes on a crack in the floor, but they could not answer his questions. Mr. Corse did not punish anybody. He said:
“We will have the same lesson again tomorrow.”
Everybody knew that Mr. Corse would not be there tomorrow. One of the little girls began to cry, then three or four of them put their heads down on their desks and sobbed. Almanzo had to sit still in his seat and look at his primer.
After a long time Mr. Corse called him to the desk, to see if he could read the lesson now. Almanzo knew every word of it, but there was a lump in his throat that would not let the words out. He stood looking at the page while Mr. Corse waited. Then they heard the big boys coming.