"Any of the home folks coming in to see?"
"Yes, seh," answered Calista. "All the school board have stopped by this morning."
Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie Woodruff. When Sim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended hand, he felt the repulsion of their attitudes and sheered off on some pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.
"I'm a Dimocrat," said Con Bonner, "and you fellers is Republicans, and we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party lines."
"The fight about the teacher," said Haakon Peterson, "is a t'ing of the past. All our candidates got odder yobs now."
"Yes," said Ezra Bronson. "Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she could get it"
"And as I was sayin'," went on Bonner, "I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin. An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I got for him." "You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can," said Peterson. "I tank you better run."
"Suits me all right," said Bronson. "I guess we three have had our fight out and understand each other."
"All right," returned Bonner, "I'll take the office again. Let's not start too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?"
"I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts," said Bonner. "He rounded up that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?"