Others had argyed with the teacher and become as broken reeds, was stedyin’ regular and bein’ polite like.  In them years, whether he wanted it or not, Ernest had rose up.  His repytation was spotless.  His age entitled him to the Fifth Reader class, but he was still spellin’ out words in the Third; fractions was only a dream to him, and he couldn’t ‘a’ told you the difference between a noun and a wild carrot.  But through it all he’d been so humble and polite that Leander looked on him as a kind of half-witted lamb.”

[Illustration:  Leander.]

“This here is the longest fairy story I ever heard tell of,” said Elmer Spiker, “We haven’t even had a sign of the prin-cess.”

“And there is a prin-cess in this here le-gend,” returned Josiah.  “She was a be-yutiful one, too.  Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley.  She had the reddish hair of the Binns and the pearl-blue eyes of the Rummelsbergers from over the mountains.  Her ma was a Rummelsberger.  She wasn’t too spare, nor was she too fleshy; she was just rounded right; and when she smiled—­ah, boys, when Pinky Binn smiled at Ernest from behind her g’ography his heart went like its spring had broke.  Yet he never showed it.  It would have been ruination for him to let it be known by sign or act that Pinky Binn was other than the general class of weemen; for is there anything worse than weemen in general?  It’s the exceptions, allus the exceptions, raises trouble with a man.  Pinky Binn was Ernest’s exception.  But the time of his great trial come, and he was true.  He stepped forth in his right light before all the school; he showed himself what he was—­the gentle lover, the masterful fighter, the heroic-est scholar Six Stars school had ever seen.”

[Illustration:  “Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley.”]

“He whipped the teacher, I know,” cried Henry Holmes.  “I told you, Ike—­he licked the teacher.”

“This here is a fairy story, Henery,” returned Isaac reprovingly.

“Even in a fairy story it ’ud be ridiculous to let a boy of fifteen beat a trained teacher,” said Josiah Nummler.  “He didn’t quite, and it come this way.  Leander asked Pinky Binn if he had eleven apples and multiplied them by five how many was they left.  She says sixty-five.  ‘Figure it out agin,’ he says, wery stern.  So she works her fingers and her lips a-while, like she was deef and dumb.  ’Five-timsone is five,’ she says, ’and five-timsone agin is five and one to carry is six—­sixty-five,’ she says.  ‘Well, I’ll be Scotch-Irished,’ says Leander gittin’ wery angry.  ‘Sech obtusety’ (Leander allus used fancy words) ‘is worthy of Ernest yander.’  He pinted his long finger at Ernest and says, ’How much is five times eleven apples?  Ernest gits up and faces the teacher, wery ca’am and wery quiet.  ‘Sixty-five,’ says he.  ‘It’s fifty-five,’ Leander shouts.  Then says