sunburned farmer with his waist-coat half unbuttoned, wearing a suit of
butternut jeans and a yellow straw hat with the wide brim turned up
like a cow's horns.

"Have you got my school-teacher in there?" he called out in a voice
that carried like a heavy, sweet-sounding bell. "And did you bring me
them things I told you to get?"

"Which is she?" he asked as he came over to the stage window and peered
in at the several travellers.

"How do you do, Miss Gabriella?" he said, taking his hat clear off his
big, honest, hairy, brown head and putting in a hand that would have
held several of Gabriella's. "I'm glad to see you; and the children
have been crying for you. Now, if you will just let me help you to a
seat in the buggy, and hold the lines for a minute while I get some
things Joe's brought me, we'll jog along home. I'm glad to see you. I
been hearing a heap about you from the superintendent."

Gabriella already loved him! When they were seated in the buggy, he
took up six-sevenths of the space. She was so close to him that it
scared her--so close that when he turned his head on his short, thick
neck to look at her, he could hardly see her.

"He has a little slip of a wife," explained Gabriella to herself. "I'm
in her seat: that's why he's used to it."

So SHE got used to it; and soon felt a frank comfort in being able to
nestle freely against him--to cling to him like a bat to a warm wall.
For cling sometimes she must. He was driving a sorrel fresh from
pasture, with long, ragged hoofs, burrs in mane and tail, and a wild
desire to get home to her foal; so that she fled across the
country--bridges, ditches, everything, frantic with maternal passion.
One circumstance made for Gabriella's security: the buggy tilted over
toward him so low, that she could not conveniently roll out: instead
she felt as though she were being whirled around a steep hillside.

Meantime, how he talked to her! Told her the school was all made up:
what families were going to send, and how many children from each. They
had all heard from the superintendent what a fine teacher she was (not
for nothing is it said that things are handed along kindly in Kentucky)!

"Oh," murmured Gabriella to herself, "if the family are only like HIM!"
The mere way in which he called her by her first name, as though she
were an old friend--a sort of old sweetheart of his whom for some
reason he had failed to marry--filled her with perfect trust.

"That's my h