se hair; those eyes--soft and gentle like a couple
of augers, Meeteetse says." Susie shook her head in mock despondency.
"I've tried to be beautiful, too. Once I cut a piece out of a newspaper
that told how you could get rosy cheeks. It gave all the different things
to put in, so I sent off and got 'em. I mixed 'em like it said and rubbed
it on my face. There wasn't any mistake about my rosy cheeks, but you
ought to have seen the blisters on my cheek-bones--big as dollars!"

"I'm sure you will not be so thin when you are older," Dora said
consolingly, "and your hair would be a very pretty color if only you would
wear a hat and take a little care of it."

Susie shook her head and sighed again.

"Oh, it will be too late then, for he will be snapped up by some of those
stylish town girls. You see."

Dora put buttons in her shirt-waist sleeves in silence.

"I think he liked to stay here until you quarrelled with him."

"I quarrelled with him?"

"Oh, didn't you?" Susie was innocence itself. "You treat him so polite, I
thought you must have quarrelled--such a chilly polite," she explained.

"I don't think _he_ has observed it," Dora answered coldly.

"Oh, yes, he has." Susie waited discreetly.

"How do you know?"

"When you come to the table and say, Good-morning, and look at him without
seeing him, I know he'd a lot rather you cuffed him."

"What a dreadful word, Susie, and what an absurd idea!"

Susie noted that Teacher's eyes brightened.

"_You'll_ be goin' away, too, pretty soon, and I s'pose you'll be glad you
will never see him again. But," she added dolefully, "ain't it awful the
way people just meets and parts?"

Dora was a long time finding that for which she was searching among the
clothes hanging on a row of nails, and Susie, rolling her eyes in that
direction, was sure, very sure, that she saw Teacher dab at her lashes
with the frilly ruffle of a petticoat before she turned around.

"When did he say he was going?"

"He didn't say; but to-day or to-morrow, I should think."

"If he cared so much because I am cool to him, he certainly would have
asked me why I treated him so. But he didn't care enough to ask."

Teacher's voice sounded queer even to herself, and she seemed intensely
interested in buttoning her boots.

"Pooh! I know why. It's because he thinks you like that Smith."

"Smith!"

"Yes, Smith."

The jangle of Ling's triangle interrupted the fascinating conversation.

"How perfec