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The father of Lyman Mertzheimer, who had been so loud in his denunciation of the tomfoolery baskets and dried weeds, suddenly developed an intense interest in a tray of butterflies and milkweed. In a few minutes it was time for dismissal. One of the older girls played a simple march on the little organ and the scholars marched from the room.
Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was feigned and his welcome was not always cordial.
"With hornets after him," added Martin. The children, reassured, ran to the newcomer. It was Lyman Mertzheimer, his face distorted and swollen, his necktie streaming from one shoulder, where he had torn it in a mad effort to beat off the angry hornets whose nest he had disturbed out of sheer joy in the destruction and an audacious idea that no insect could scare him away or worst him in a fight.
"So am I. I wouldn't have missed that oration for a great deal. I could smell the arbutus say, it was great, Amanda!" At that moment Lyman Mertzheimer joined them. "Congratulations, Amanda," he said in his affected manner. As the good- looking son of a wealthy man he credited himself with the possession of permissible pride.
"I like Amanda," he thought frankly, but he never went beyond that in the analysis of his feelings for the comrade of his childhood and young boyhood. "I like her and I'd hate to see her waste her time on a fellow like Lyman Mertzheimer. I'm glad she squelched him. Perhaps some day he'll find there are still some desirable things that money can't buy."
"Who knows, Amanda," he said lightly, yet with all the feeling he was capable of at that time, "perhaps you'll love and marry Lyman Mertzheimer yet! Stranger things than that have happened. I'm sorry about that word. It seemed just like a good joke to catch on to the right spelling that way and beat the others in the match.
They'll get what they earn some day. Nobody has yet sowed weeds and got a crop of potatoes from it." "But," said the girl, "I can't understand it. The Mertzheimer people come from good families and they have certainly been taught to be different. I can't see where they get their mean streak. With all their money and chance to improve and opportunities for education and culture "
Mertzheimer, Senior, sympathized with his aggrieved son and stormed and vowed he'd see if he'd vote for that red-headed snip of a teacher next year. The Reists thought they were somebody, anyhow, and they had no more money than he had, perhaps not so much. What right had she to be ugly to Lyman when he did her the honor to ask her to marry him? The snip! He'd show her!
Lyman Mertzheimer outspelled his opponents and stood alone on the platform, a smiling victor. "The cheat! The contemptible cheat!" hammered in Amanda's brain. After the distribution of prizes, cheap reprint editions of well-known books, an auctioneer stepped on the platform and drew from a corner a bushel basket of packages of various sizes and shapes.
Mertzheimer is back of it, somehow. The old man is a heavy depositor there, isn't he?" "Yes, but why under the sun would he say such a thing about me? I never liked Lyman and he had no love for me, but he has no cause to bear me ill will. I haven't anything he wants, I'm sure." "No?" The girl bit her lip and felt her cheeks burn. Martin looked at her, amazed. Why was she blushing?
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