"More agony," she said. "Jimmy is promised boots, mind you! This is a gratifying proof that rural schools improve the understanding--but what on earth they will do without toes to wiggle is beyond me!"
The girls were still laughing over the thought of Jimmy's direful future when a third child appeared. It was a word in her reader now that furnished the conventional stumbling block on which to mount to her teacher's confidence.
"What?" that young woman exclaimed. "More shoes? Mercy! But it's very nice! And now run back and finish the page before I ring the bell."
This time, turning to Nancy, Jane sighed: "More shoes! All of this suffering humanity will surely not survive that night. Really, Nan, I think it's the most extraordinary thing I ever encountered the way these children's parents are shoeing them for commencement! Mark my words, before the exercises are half over we'll be hearing shoes drop all over the room. They simply won't keep them on! It'll be awful." She was about to say more, when Mrs. Owsley appeared in the door.
Mrs. Owsley was the thirty-five-year-old scholar; and the only one, until Dale came, who might strictly have been termed of the mountains. She was, moreover, the mother of nine smaller Owsleys--the smallest of whom she brought each day and laid in a box prepared for the purpose near the teacher's desk. The previous autumn she had left "Bill an' the other eight brats" back in their remote home, and moved down to Mother Owsley's, four miles from school, to which she walked each day, bare-footed, and carrying the infant. It was an enthusiasm for education, characteristic of these mountaineers, which might not be met anywhere else in a country termed civilized.
"Heavens!" gasped Jane. "I thought it was another child coming to tell me about shoes!"
"Did you ever see how Mrs. Owsley does with her shoes?" Nancy asked, being careful not to smile while the impassive woman's eyes were turned in her direction.
"The poor, poverty stricken dears, all of them," Jane tenderly exclaimed. "But that's a common custom in some parts of the mountains, Nan. I've seen it when a circuit-rider had come through, and was going to hold church somewhere; nearly all who possessed shoes would carry them across their shoulders that way during their long walk to attend, and then sit on the meetinghouse steps and put them on. Shoes have to last a long time up there," she added wistfully. "They mustn't be worn out by walking on them."