ssity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are
poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day
charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat
steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded
with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone.
The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then
one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and
cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the tree against
his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can watch his
attempts at mischief with a certain amusement.

This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had gone through. First, the
indignant surprise of a generous nature, when it comes unexpectedly into
relations with a mean one. Then the impulse of extermination,--a divine
instinct, intended to keep down vermin of all classes to their working
averages in the economy of Nature. Then a return of cheerful
tolerance,--a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with rats and
sharpers, he could; with a confident trust, that, in the long run,
terriers and honest men would have the upperhand, and a grateful
consciousness that he had been sent just at the right time to come
between a patient victim and the master who held her in peonage.

Having once made up his mind what to do, Mr. Bernard was as good-natured
and hopeful as ever. He had the great advantage, from his professional
training, of knowing how to recognize and deal with the nervous
disturbances to which overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough
that Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if he
could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her weight of
cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of those women who
naturally overwork themselves, like those horses who will go at the top
of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable.
It is as hard reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with
Io, when she was flying over land and sea, driven by the sting of the
never-sleeping gadfly.

This was a delicate, interesting game that he played. Under one innocent
pretext or another, he invaded this or that special province she had made
her own. He would collect the themes and have them all read and marked,
answer all the puzzling questions in mathematics, make the other teachers
come to