which no doubt led the
superintendent to mark her high.

"What method would you pursue with a boy in your school who was
addicted to swearing?" she was asked.

"I suppose I should make him swear off!" said Tillie, with actual
flippancy.

A neat young woman of the class, sitting directly in front of the
superintendent, and wearing spectacles and very straight, tight hair,
cast a shocked and reproachful look upon Tillie, and turning to the
examiner, said primly, "_I_ would organize an anti-swearing society in
the school, and reward the boys who were not profane by making them
members of it, expelling those who used any profane language."

"And make every normal boy turn blasphemer in derision, I'm afraid,"
was the superintendent's ironical comment.

When, at four o'clock that afternoon, she drove back with the doctor
through the winter twilight, bearing her precious certificate in her
bosom, the brightness of her face seemed to reflect the brilliancy of
the red sunset glow on snow-covered fields, frozen creek, and
farm-house windows.

"Bully fur you, Matilda!" the doctor kept repeating at intervals. "Now
won't Miss Margaret be tickled, though! I tell you what, wirtue like
hern gits its rewards even in this here life. She'll certainly be set
up to think she's made a teacher out of you unbeknownst! And mebbe it
won't tickle her wonderful to think how she's beat Jake Getz!" he
chuckled.

"Of course you're writin' to her to-night, Tillie, ain't you?" he
asked. "I'd write her off a letter myself if writin' come handier to
me."

"Of course I shall let her know at once," Tillie replied; and in her
voice, for the first time in the doctor's acquaintance with her, there
was a touch of gentle complacency.

"I'll get your letter out the tree-holler to-morrow morning, then, when
I go a-past--and I can stamp it and mail it fur you till noon. Then
she'll get it till Monday morning yet! By gum, won't she, now, be
tickled!"

"Isn't it all beautiful!" Tillie breathed ecstatically. "I've got my
certificate and the teacher won't be put out! What did Adam Oberholzer
and Joseph Kettering say, Doc?"

"I've got them fixed all right! Just you wait, Tillie!" he said
mysteriously. "Mebbe us we ain't goin' to have the laugh on your pop
and old Nathaniel Puntz! You'll see! Wait till your pop comes home and
says what's happened at Board meetin' to-night! Golly! Won't he be
hoppin' mad!"

"What is going to happen, Doc?"

"You wait a