Evidently there was no sociability to be got out of Jacob Hoar that afternoon, and we left him. A few yards further, we passed Ford's, the baker's. No end of heads were at the shop door, and _they_ seemed to be staring at Hoar. "He must have been dealing out a little abuse to the public generally, Tod," said I. "Very likely," answered Tod. "He seems bursting with some rage or other." "Nay, I don't think it's rage so much as vexation. Something must have gone wrong." "Well, perhaps so." "Look here, Tod. If we had a home to keep up and a lot of mouths to feed and weekly rent to pay, and a strike stopped the supplies, we might be in a worse humour than Hoar is." "Right, Johnny." And Tod went off at a strapping pace. How it may be with other people, I don't know: but when I get back to a place after an absence, I want to see every one, and am apt to go dashing in at doors without warning. "It won't take us a minute to look in on Miss Timmens, Tod," I said, as we neared the school-house. "She'll tell us the news of the whole parish." "Take the minute, then, if you like," said Tod. "I am not going to bother myself with Miss Timmens." Neither perhaps should I, after that, for Tod swayed me still; but in passing the door it was opened wide by one of the little scholars. Miss Timmens sat in her chair, the lithe, thin cane, three yards long, raised in her hand, its other end descending, gently enough on the shoulders of a chattering girl. "I don't keep it to beat 'em," Miss Timmens was wont to say of her cane, "but just to tap 'em into attention when they are beyond the reach of my hand." And, to give her her due, it was nothing more. "It's you, is it, Master Johnny? I heard you were all expected." "It's me, safe enough. How goes the world with you, Miss Timmens?" "Cranky," was the short answer. "South Crabb's going out of its senses, I think. The parson is trying to introduce fresh ways and doings, in my school: new-fangled rubbish, Master Johnny, that will bring more harm than good. I won't have it, and so he and I are at daggers drawn. And there's a strike in the place!" I nodded. While she spoke, it had struck me, looking at the room, that it was not so full as usual. "It's the strike does that," she said, in a sort of triumph. "It's the strike that works all the ill and every kind of evil"--and it was quite evident the strike found no more favour with her than the parson's fresh ways. "But what has the strike to do with the children's absence from school?" "The strike has carried all the children's best things to the pawn-shop, and they've nothing decent left to come abroad in. That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow," she concluded, very tartly. "Is there any other?"