Mirandy had nothing but contempt for the new master until he developed
the bulldog in his character. Mirandy fell in love with the bulldog.
Like many other girls of her class, she was greatly enamored with the
"subjection of women," and she stood ready to fall in love with any man
strong enough to be her master. Much has been said of the strong-minded
woman. I offer this psychological remark as a contribution to the
natural history of the weak-minded woman.

It was at the close of that very second day on which Ralph had achieved
his first victory over the school, and in which Mirandy had been seized
with her desperate passion for him, that she told him about it. Not in
words. We do not allow _that_ in the most civilized countries, and still
less would it be tolerated in Hoopole County. But Mirandy told the
master the fact that she was in love with him, though no word passed her
lips. She walked by him from school. She cast at him what are commonly
called sheep's-eyes. Ralph thought them more like calf's eyes. She
changed the whole tone of her voice. She whined ordinarily. Now she
whimpered. And so by ogling him, by blushing at him, by tittering at
him, by giggling at him, by snickering at him, by simpering at him, by
making herself tenfold more a fool even than nature had made her, she
managed to convey to the dismayed soul of the young teacher the
frightful intelligence that he was loved by the richest, the ugliest,
the silliest, the coarsest, and the most entirely contemptible girl in
Flat Creek district.

Ralph sat by the fire the next morning trying to read a few minutes
before school-time, while the boys were doing the chores and the bound
girl was milking the cows, with no one in the room but the old woman.