Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "Mr. Tedford, Have You Any Huyler Boxes?" Dixie School Girl (Page 36)] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A DIXIE SCHOOL GIRL By GABRIELLE E. JACKSON Made In U.S.A. M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY CHICAGO :: NEW YORK ------------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT 1913 BY M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY Made in U. S. A. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO MY TWO DIXIE NEIGHBORS, whose entertaining tales of their childhood escapades have helped to make these stories, this first volume of the "Dixie Girl" is most affectionately inscribed by their friend. G. E. J. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER I FULL SPEED FOR FOUR CORNERS Four straight country roads running at right angles. You cannot see where they begin because they have their beginning "over the hills and far away," but you can see where they end at "Four Corners," the hub of that universe, for there stand the general store, which is also the postoffice, the "tavern," as it is called in that part of the world, the church, the rectory, and perhaps a dozen private dwellings. "Four Corners" is oddly mis-named, because there are no corners there at all. It is a circle. Maybe it was originally four corners, but today it is certainly a circle with a big open space in the center, and in the very middle of that stands a flag staff upon which floats the stars and stripes. The whole open space is covered with the softest green turf. _Not_ a lawn, mind you, such as one may see in almost any immaculately kept northern town, with artistic flower beds dotting it, and a carefully trimmed border of foliage plants surrounding it. No, this circle has real Virginia turf; the thick, rich, indestructible turf one finds in England, which, as an old gardener told the writer, "we rolls and tills it for a thousand years." Nature had been rolling and tilling this green plot of ground for a good many thousand years. The circle was encompassed by an iron rail fence to which the people from the surrounding community hitched their saddle or carriage horses when they came to the "Store" for their mail, or to make various purchases. And there the beasties often stood for hours, rubbing noses and exchanging the gossip of the paddocks, horse (or mule) fashion.