could to drill the three R's into the somewhat blockish heads of about twenty children ranging in years from five to the still tender age of the teacher herself.
Fortunately Lena did not have much trouble with discipline. Her pupils were not, like little city hoodlums, vulgar and boisterous with the life of the streets. Nor were they like the children in smaller towns, who are quite as vulgar and boisterous and are held less in control because their school "system" is perforce less ironly rigid than that in the big cities. Lena's pupils were mostly inbred and undernourished children, brought up from infancy on skim milk, sowbelly, and cornmeal cakes, and living on lonely farms where they had no chance to develop infantile mob spirit. They were pallid, long-faced, adenoidal little creatures, who were too tired after the long walk to school to give the teacher much trouble. The slang, rag, and jazz, which standardize vulgarity in the towns and cities, penetrated to this out-of-the-way corner only as faint, scarcely-heard echoes. The phonograph and the colored "funny sheet" were unknown. Hence, Lena, though she did not know it, had much to be thankful for. The loud munching of apples, the shuffling of feet, the occasional throwing of spit-balls, or exchanging of scribbled notes were the main breaches of a discipline which was never at any time at all rigid. There was one pupil, however, who often gave the teacher a good deal of trouble; and that, strange to say, was a girl. She was Bill Pippinger's youngest daughter, Judith.
Judith was a lithe, active, slim little creature, monkey-like in the agility with which she could climb trees and shin up poles and vault over fences. Her bare, brown toes took hold like fingers. There was something wild and evasive about her swift, sinuous little body, alive with quick, unexpected movements, like those of a young animal. She was like a naughty little goblin that springs up mockingly in your path and before you can reach for it has run up a tree or vanished into the thicket. These characteristics of her body were somewhat contradicted by her face, vivid and bold in color and outline and habitually serious. Her eyebrows were black and straight
