ling me about you."

"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when
you have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in
your school."

"You--you are too far advanced for our school," said the little
teacher, with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful.
"Especially if you came from a place where the schools are graded as in
the city."

"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said, "I was in my junior year at
high."

"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any
such system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I
have to teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our
books go--that is all."

She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was
not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from
the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the
Poketown school.

Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss
Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no
way with her."

While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before
her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even
heard of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The
older pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves;
Miss Scattergood had little control over them.

The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class
practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four
boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the
back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth
who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops,
marbles, and other small possessions dear to childish hearts,
threatening by gesture and writhing lips a "slaughter of the innocents"
if one of them dared "tell teacher."

Few of the older boys were studying, and none of the bigger girls. The
latter were too much interested in Janice. Looking them over, there
was not one of these Poketown girls to whom Janice felt herself
attracted. Some of them giggled as they caught her eye; others
whispered together with the visitor as the evident subject of their
secret observations; and one girl, seeing that Janice was looking at
her, actually stuck out her tongue--a pink flag of scorn and defiance!

Janice believed that in English, history an