t I got you into such a scrape!"

Tillie thought Miss Margaret could not have heard her clearly.

"He--burnt up your book yet, Miss Margaret!" she found voice to whisper
again.

"Indeed! I ought to make him pay for it!"

"He didn't know it was yourn, Miss Margaret--he don't uphold to
novel-readin', and if he'd know it was yourn he'd have you put out of
William Penn, so I tole him I lent it off of Elviny Dinkleberger--and
I'll help you Fridays till it's paid for a'ready, if you'll leave me,
Miss Margaret!"

She lifted pleading eyes to the teacher's face, to see therein a look
of anger such as she had never before beheld in that gentle
countenance--for Miss Margaret had caught sight of the marks of the
strap on Tillie's bare neck, and she was flushed with indignation at
the outrage. But Tillie, interpreting the anger to be against herself,
turned as white as death, and a look of such hopeless woe came into her
face that Miss Margaret suddenly realized the dread apprehension
torturing the child.

"Come here to me, you poor little thing!" she tenderly exclaimed,
drawing the little girl into her lap and folding her to her heart. "I
don't care anything about the BOOK, honey! Did you think I would?
There, there--don't cry so, Tillie, don't cry. _I_ love you, don't you
know I do!"--and Miss Margaret kissed the child's quivering lips, and
with her own fragrant handkerchief wiped the tears from her cheeks, and
with her soft, cool fingers smoothed back the hair from her hot
forehead.

And this child, who had never known the touch of a mother's hand and
lips, was transported in that moment from the suffering of the past
night and morning, to a happiness that made this hour stand out to her,
in all the years that followed, as the one supreme experience of her
childhood.

Ineffable tenderness of the mother heart of woman!

That afternoon, when Tillie got home from school,--ten minutes late
according to the time allowed her by her father,--she was quite unable
to go out to help him in the field. Every step of the road home had
been a dragging burden to her aching limbs, and the moment she reached
the farm-house, she tumbled in a little heap upon the kitchen settee
and lay there, exhausted and white, her eyes shining with fever, her
mouth parched with thirst, her head throbbing with pain--feeling
utterly indifferent to the consequences of her tardiness and her
failure to meet her father in the field.

"Ain't you feelin' g