ou well? You look pale
and ill! What is it, Tillie?"

Tillie's overwrought heart could bear no more. Her head fell on Miss
Margaret's shoulder as she broke into wildest crying. Her body quivered
with her gasping sobs and her little hands clutched convulsively at
Miss Margaret's gown.

"You poor little thing!" whispered Miss Margaret, her arms about the
child; "WHAT'S the matter with you, honey? There, there, don't cry
so--tell me what's the matter."

It was such bliss to be petted like this--to feel Miss Margaret's arms
about her and hear that loved voice so close to her!--for the last
time! Never again after this moment would she be liked and caressed!
Her heart was breaking and she could not answer for her sobbing.

"Tillie, dear, sit down here in my chair until I send the other
children out to recess--and then you and I can have a talk by
ourselves," Miss Margaret said, leading the child a step to her
arm-chair on the platform. She stood beside the chair, holding Tillie's
throbbing head to her side, while she tapped the bell which dismissed
the children.

"Now," she said, when the door had closed on the last of them and she
had seated herself and drawn Tillie to her again, "tell me what you are
crying for, little girlie."

"Miss Margaret!" Tillie's words came in hysterical, choking gasps; "you
won't never like me no more when I tell you what's happened, Miss
Margaret!"

"Why, dear me, Tillie, what on earth is it?"

"I didn't mean to do it, Miss Margaret! And I'll redd up for you,
Fridays, still, till it's paid for a'ready, Miss Margaret, if you'll
leave me, won't you, please? Oh, won't you never like me no more?"

"My dear little goosie, what IS the matter with you? Come," she said,
taking the little girl's hand reassuringly in both her own, "tell me,
child."

A certain note of firmness in her usually drawling Southern voice
checked a little the child's hysterical emotion. She gulped the choking
lump in her throat and answered.

"I was readin' 'Ivanhoe' in bed last night, and pop woke up, and seen
my candle-light, and he conceited he'd look once and see what it was,
and then he seen me, and he don't uphold to novel-readin', and he--he--"

"Well?" Miss Margaret gently urged her faltering speech.

"He whipped me and--and burnt up your Book!"

"Whipped you again!" Miss Margaret's soft voice indignantly exclaimed.
"The br--" she checked herself and virtuously closed her lips. "I'm so
sorry, Tillie, tha