"Now, this is Main Street that leads past us down into the Settlement.

Here is the Poplars, here the chapel, and this is Elsie Spurlock's

house. Nickols and the parson are inclined to place the schoolhouse

right opposite, but I am afraid it is too near the Settlement and too

far from the Town. Do you suppose the Town children will be able to walk

so far?"

"Do you really--really plan to have the Town and the Settlement go to

school together?" I gasped.

"Well, Goodloe thinks that the ideal public school system is only to be

executed in a democratic--" father was saying, when Nickols interrupted

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him.

"What does it matter where the two and a half kids from the decadent old

families that are dying out go to school? Their sterile parents can

motor 'em down to education!" he exclaimed. "Right here is the logical

place for the school with the meadow behind it to give a bit of

distance, the oak grove back of that, the Country Club beyond, with the

river beginning to curve it in. It solidifies and unifies the landscape

of the whole town and puts all the community centers where they belong.

The Town and Settlement straggled a bit before, but the chapel and the

school will unite them! Braid says the schoolhouse can be built of

weathered stone and concrete and finished by September fifth, in time to

start school. Wilkerson can begin immediately putting out his hedges and

the Reverend Gregory is down there now finishing laying out the

playground with his ball park."

"That's it--that's the baseball nine Dabney is washing Mikey for!"

exclaimed Charlotte, catching up with the conversation. "And when we all

go to school with the Settlements and they are clean some, and Mildred

Payne and Grace Sproul and some of the others get dirty a little, nobody

will know the difference and we can play ball and scouts and everything

Minister teaches us. That school makes enough children to do things. We

haven't got enough for anything, but the Settlements have, and it is

mighty good of them to come up and let us play with them."

"Keep up with the times, Charlotte; don't be a back number. Miss

Olymphia Lassiter's school may have held you and Nell, but it will never

hold young Charlotte," Nickols jeered, as father began to roll up the

map and speak to a young man that the great Wilkerson of White Plains

had sent down to juggle with the flora and fauna of the Harpeth Valley.




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