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Page: of 436
COUNTRY SCHOOLS
A round of enthusiastic applause broke out at the conclusion of this
stirring address. Niles bowed and soberly resumed his place on the boys’
bench. Then he looked over at his cousins, winked one eye and grinned.
Tears filled the eyes of most of the girls, and one or two boys swallowed
hard and tried not to show how envious they were.
After school, as Niles and his cousins walked through the village
streets with Charles Mulford and the Wickes girls, Deborah and Delight,
their conversation centered on Indians and the far west.
“You know,” declared Niles, “when I read Cooper and Catlin it
makes me want to pack my bags and go as far from civilization as I can
travel. Imagine being able to stand on top of a Missouri bluff and look
for hundreds of miles in all directions! Catlin says it’s so quiet you can’t
hear a sparrow or a cricket!”
“Come now,” protested Charles. ““That’s a bit of exaggeration, I’d
say. It may be quiet out there, but where there’s life there has to be
sound!”
“I suppose so, but I was just repeating Catlin’s words. How much
noise can a rabbit make?”
“Tve heard rabbits make noise—it’s a very sweet sound, I think!” said
Deborah.
“Would you really want to go out where there are wild Indians,
Niles?” asked Mary. “I feel sorry for what’s been done to them, but Black
Hawk did say he drank the blood of whites! I’d be scared to go.”
“Of course I’d go, but I wouldn’t go unarmed—I’m not foolish! I can’t
think of anything I’d rather do, unless it was go to China.”
“Well, not me, thank you,” said Cornelia primly. “I’ll stay where it’s
civilized and pleasant, if you please.”
“What if you had a husband who wanted to go away on business?”
asked Delight.
“Why, I'd let him, of course!” laughed Cornelia. “But I’ll not marry
someone like that.”
“What kind will you marry, Nellie?”
“None of your business, Charles Mulford!””
_ The young people, whose ages ranged from Mary’s fifteen to Niles’s
nineteen years, parted company when they came to the Mulford store on
Main Street. After saying goodbye to Charley, who went in to help his
brother after school, the others continued as far as Dr. Platt Wickes’s
house, where Deb and Delight took their.leave. Niles and his girl cousins
turned left at the next corner, walked past the Frisbie houge and came at
last to the home of Judge John Niles.
In the summertime Niles Searls boarded with his Uncle John and Aunt
Polly while attending Rensselaerville Academy, but every winter since his
72
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