"
"You're right. Poor little Belle! Perhaps we'd better find some job or
other round the _adobe_ this afternoon. There'll be ructions."
But the ructions did not take place that day. It seems that Alethea-
Belle told her scholars she was suffering severely from headache. She
begged them politely to be as quiet as possible. Perhaps amazement
constrained obedience.
"These foothill imps will kill her," said Ajax.
Within a week we knew that the big boys were becoming unmanageable,
but no such information leaked from Alethea-Belle's lips. Each evening
at supper we asked how she had fared during the day. Always she
replied primly: "I thank you; I'm getting along nicely, better than I
expected."
Mrs. Spafford, a peeper through doors and keyholes, explained the
schoolmarm's methods.
"I jest happened to be passin' by," she told me, "and I peeked in
through--through the winder. That great big hoodlum of a George Spragg
was a-sassin' Miss Buchanan an' makin' faces at her. The crowd was a-
whoopin' him up. In the middle o' the uproar she kneels down. 'O
Lord,' says she, 'I pray Thee to soften the heart of pore George
Spragg, and give me, a weak woman, the strength to prevail against his
everlastin' ignorance and foolishness!' George got the colour of a
beet, but he quit his foolin'.
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