you interrupt so much, I never shall finish my story, Anstice," she
said.

"I want the girls to understand this," said Miss Anstice with decision.
"The principal said she was the best educated scholar he had ever seen
graduated from Hilltop Academy."

"Well, now if you have finished," said Miss Salisbury, laughing, "I will
proceed. So I was despatched by my father to a town about thirty miles
away, to a boarding school kept by the widow of a clergyman who had been
a college classmate. Well, I was sorry to leave all my young brothers
and sisters, you may be sure, while my mother--girls, I haven't even now
forgotten the pang it cost me to kiss my mother good-bye."

Miss Salisbury stopped suddenly, and let her gaze wander off to the
waving tree-tops; and Miss Anstice fell into a revery that kept her face
turned away.

"But it was the only way I could get an education; and you know I could
not be fitted for a teacher, which was to be my life work, unless I
went; so I stifled all those dreadful feelings which anticipated my
homesickness, and pretty soon I found myself in the boarding school."

"How many scholars were there, Miss Salisbury?" asked Laura Page, who
was very exact.

"Fifteen girls," said Miss Salisbury.

"Oh dear me, what a little bit of a school!" exclaimed one girl.

"The schools were not as large in those days," said Miss Salisbury. "You
must keep in mind the great difference between that time and this, my
dear. Well, and when I was once there, I had quite enough to do to keep
me from being homesick, I can assure you, through the day; because, in
addition to lessons, there was the sewing hour."

"Sewing? Oh my goodness me!" exclaimed Alexia. "You didn't have to sew
at that school, did you, Miss Salisbury?"

"I surely did," replied Miss Salisbury, "and very glad I have been,
Alexia, that I learned so much in that sewing hour. I have seriously
thought, sister and I, of introducing the plan into our school."

"Oh, don't, Miss Salisbury," screamed the girls. "Ple--ase don't make us
sew." Some of them jumped to their feet in distress.

"I shall die," declared Alexia tragically, "if we have to sew."

There was such a general gloom settled over the entire party that Miss
Salisbury hastened to say, "I don't think, girls, we can do it, because
something else equally important would have to be given up to make the
time." At which the faces brightened up.

"Well, I was only to stay at this school a year,