e. When he had the fire burning better, he straightened up and
wandered round to the other side of it. At this, the sinister
silhouette, acting as a sort of dissolving view, came out in favor of
the old maxim that "there is a bright side to everything." It was no
less a person than Jonas Hicks. Little Jimmie Wanger's "Misser Donas!"

"Misser Donas dimme pop,"--Janet's mind took a jump to this. Morning
and night she had heard the sentence reiterated by the diminutive
Jimmie, the interpretation of which was, according to Rosie, that Mr.
Hicks had at one time presented Jimmie with a ball of pop-corn. It was
the only sentence Jimmie's mind cared to communicate. As it was the
only thing in life worth mentioning, he brought it out upon every
occasion; thus it had become recorded on her mind with phonographic
unforgettableness, and when she saw Mr. Hicks through the knot-hole his
act of benevolence repeated itself in the same words. The sight of
this benefactor in the guise of a cursing desperado made a clash among
the ideas in her mind; but Jimmie's sentence came out on top.

Besides hearing about him in this way, she had once had the honor of
meeting Mr. Hicks himself--this time also in connection with his
leaning toward children. He stopped at her schoolyard pump for a
drink, and having taken it he put his head in at the door and smiled--a
thing he never did upon compulsion. Being invited to enter, he did so,
taking the visitors' chair near the rostrum; and when she asked him,
according to the time-honored custom, whether he would not like to
address a few words to the school, he did that also, standing his whip
up in the corner and giving some very engaging advice upon the subject
of education, part of which, being of a hidden nature, was evidently
intended for the entertainment of the teacher. In this way he had been
her one and only visitor; and then, having had his jocose presence so
repeatedly called to mind at the Wangers', she had become disabled to
think of him as anything but the ministering angel of pop-corn.

Now her sole concern was to put in her appearance in as graceful a
manner as possible. Whatever sort of man he might really be, she knew
he was a person of quick intelligence who would certainly see any
indications of her taking fright at him. She wished to emerge at once,
smoothly and naturally. But when she put her hands to the tight
roofing-board she discovered that there was going to be di