The school did not have a well and therefore had to get water from the railway station pump. If [one] [was] a boy, it was something [he] started dreaming about in Grade 1, even though there was not the remotest chance it could ever happen before at least Grade 5, and only then if the teacher thought [he] [was] big and strong enough. Both the boys and girls consider these practices to be normal, as custom has embedded the role expectations in them. The setting inevitably contributes to how they respond to these situations and ultimately how the next generation will.
When Alma Niles has the courage to question established practice, the classroom is changed forever. Alma is a deep enough thinker that she wonders why it is accepted that the boys get to carry the water. She finds it unfair that the boys have the chance to "skip school for half an hour at a time [or] get to sneak into Rowsell's store on the way back." Miss Ralston also has a certain amount of courage, for she surprises everyone by saying, "I'll think about that, and I'll let you know next Friday." The teacher is respected and therefore is not punished for what she said, but Alma suffers immediately from her actions. "The trouble started right away as soon as [the children] got into the schoolyard, because all the boys knew, from the moment Miss Ralston had spoken, that something of theirs was being threatened and that, at long as there was the remotest chance that any girl might get to carry the water, they had to do everything in their power to stop it." Alma and her friends got ink balls in their hair, nasty notes, were tripped while going down the aisle, and locked in the outhouse. Through all this though, the girls "stuck to [Alma] like burrs." "Instead of just standing back and watching Alma get beaten up, as [the girls] usually did when the boys were after someone, the girls rushed right in to try and help her." The conflict over the water also brought about changes among the boys and girls as a group.
