As a rule, Ruby Ann was popular with the majority of the people, and there had been some opposition to a change.  It was hardly fair, they said to the Colonel, who took so much interest in the school, and who was sure to feel angry and hurt if deprived of the privilege of catechising the teachers in the office he had erected for that purpose on his grounds.  He had not only built the school-house, but had kept it in repair, and had added a classroom for the older scholars because somebody said it was needed, and had not objected when it was only used for wraps and dinner pails, and balls and clubs in the summer, and in the winter for coal and wood and sleds and skates and other things pertaining to a school of wide-awake girls and boys.

This was the conservative party, but there was another which wanted a change.  They had been in a rut long enough, and they laughed at the Colonel’s formula, which nearly every child knew by heart.  The Colonel was too old to run things,—­they must have something up to date, and when the president of Mayville Normal School applied for a situation for Eloise she was accepted, and Ruby Ann went to the wall.  She was greatly chagrined and disappointed when she found herself supplanted by a normal graduate, of whom she had not a much higher opinion than the Colonel himself.  When she heard of the accident and that her rival was disabled, she was conscious just for a moment of a feeling of exultation, as if Eloise had received her just deserts.  She was, however, a kind-hearted, well-principled woman, and soon cast the feeling aside as unworthy of her, and tried to believe she was sorry for the girl, who, she heard, was very young, and had been carried in the darkness and rain to Mrs. Biggs’s house in Howard Crompton’s arms.

“I would almost be willing to sprain my ankle for the sake of being carried in that way,” Ruby thought, and then laughed as she tried to fancy the young man bending beneath the weight of her hundred and ninety pounds.

It was at this juncture that Mr. Bills came in asking if she would take Miss Smith’s place until she was able to walk.  It might be two weeks, and it might be three, and it might be less, he said.  Any way, they didn’t want a cripple in the school-house for Tom Walker to raise Hail Columby with.  Would Ruby Ann swaller her pride and be a substitute?

“It is a good deal to ask me to do after I have been turned out of office,” she said, “but I am not one to harbor resentment.  Yes, I’ll take the school till Miss Smith is able.  How does she look?  I hear she is very young.”

“Well, she’s some younger than you, I guess, and looks like a child as she sits down,” Mr. Bills replied.  “Why, you are big as two of her,—­yes, three,—­and could throw her over the house.”

Ruby’s face clouded, and Mr. Bills went on:  “She is handsome as blazes, with a mouth which keeps kind of quivering, as if she wanted to cry, or something, and eyes—­well, you’ve got to see ’em to know what they are like.  They are just eyes which make an old man like me feel,—­I don’t know how.”