ich the youth had presented to Tillie. "Here,
Absalom, take your 'What a Young Husband Ought to Know' and go home."

Something in the teacher's quiet, confident tone cowed Absalom
completely--for the time being, at least. He was conquered. It was very
bewildering. The man before him was not half his weight and was not in
the least ruffled. How had he so easily "licked" him? Absalom, by
reason of his stalwart physique and the fact that his father was a
director, had, during most of his school life, found pleasing diversion
in keeping the various teachers of William Penn cowed before him. He
now saw his supremacy in that quarter at an end--physically speaking at
least. There might be a moral point of attack.

"Look-ahere!" he blustered. "Do you know my pop's Nathaniel Puntz, the
director?"

"You are a credit to him, Absalom. By the way, will you take a message
to him from me? Tell him, please, that the lock on the school-room door
is broken, and I'd be greatly obliged if he would send up a lock-smith
to mend it."

Absalom looked discouraged. A Harvard graduate was, manifestly, a freak
of nature--invulnerable at all points.

"If pop gets down on you, you won't be long at William Penn!" he
bullied. "You'll soon get chased off your job!"

"My job at breaking you in? Well, well, I might be spending my time
more profitably, that's so."

"You go on out of here and le' me alone with my girl!" quavered
Absalom, blinking away tears of rage.

"That will be as she says. How is it, Miss Tillie? Do you want him to
go?"

Now Tillie knew that if she allowed Absalom Puntz to leave her in his
present state of baffled anger, Fairchilds would not remain in New
Canaan a month. Absalom was his father's only child, and Nathaniel
Puntz was known to be both suspicious and vindictive. "Clothed in a
little brief authority," as school director, he never missed an
opportunity to wield his precious power.

With quick insight, Tillie realized that the teacher would think meanly
of her if, after her outcry at Absalom's amorous behavior, she now
inconsistently ask that he remain with her for the rest of the evening.
But what the teacher might think about HER did not matter so much as
that he should be saved from the wrath of Absalom.

"Please leave him stay," she answered in a low voice.

Fairchilds gazed in surprise upon the girl's sweet, troubled face. "Let
him stay?"

"Yes."

"Then perhaps my interference was unwelcome?"

"I than