All this time, the dark-faced Cracker had been glooming from a corner, earnestly seeking to fathom the wrongness he sensed in the gathering. Now he came forward. "I reckon I may be making a mistake to say anything," said he, "f'r we-all is strangers hyeh, an' we're pore; but I must speak out for Mr. Jim--I must! Don't turn him out, folks, f'r he's done mo' f'r us than eveh any one done in the world!" "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Peterson. "I mean," said Raymond, "that when Mr. Jim began talking school to us, we was a pore no-'count lot without any learnin', with nothin' to talk about except our wrongs, an' our enemies, and the meanness of the Iowa folks. You see we didn't understand you-all. An' now, we have hope. We done got hope from this school. We're goin' to make good in the world. We're getting education. We're all learnin' to use books. My little sister will be as good as anybody, if you'll just let Mr. Jim alone in this school--as good as any one. An' I'll he'p pap get a farm, and we'll work and think at the same time, an' be happy!" CHAPTER IX JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken off into the apron of Miss Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as the very smallest and least bloomy of all the plums on the tree; but there is something which tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having received the votes of the people for any office, especially in a region of high average civilization, covering six hundred or seven hundred square miles of good American domain. Jennie was a sensible country girl. Being sensible, she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel some little sense of increased importance as she drove her father's little one-cylinder runabout over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December weather, just before Christmas. The weather itself was stimulating, and she was making rapid progress in the management of the little car which her father had offered to lend her for use in visiting the one hundred or more rural schools soon to come under her supervision. She rather fancied the picture of herself, clothed in more or less authority and queening it over her little army of teachers. Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically conscious that she made rather an agreeable picture, as she stopped her car alongside his top buggy to talk with him. She had bright blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled at him ingratiatingly. "Don't you think father is lovely?" said she. "He is going to let me use the runabout when I visit the schools." "That will be good," said Haakon. "It will save you lots of time. I hope you make the county pay for the gasoline." "I haven't thought about that," said Jennie. "Everybody's been so nice to me--I want to give as well as receive."