amed."

They read it together at her bidding, with a wondering, half-serious
look in their faces, and then she said, "Now, shall we pray?"

The former teacher had not opened her school with prayer. It had never
been even suggested in that school. It might have been a dangerous
experiment if Margaret had attempted it sooner in her program. As it
was, there was a shuffling of feet in the back seats at her first word;
but the room, grew quiet again, perhaps out of curiosity to hear a
woman's voice in prayer:

"Our Heavenly Father, we want to ask Thee to bless us in our work
together, and to help us to be such workmen that we shall not need to be
ashamed to show our work to Thee at the close of the day. For Christ's
sake we ask it. Amen."

They did not have time to resent that prayer before she had them
interested in something else. In fact, she had planned her whole first
day out so that there should not be a minute for misbehavior. She had
argued that if she could just get time to become acquainted with them
she might prevent a lot of trouble before it ever started. Her first
business was to win her scholars. After that she could teach them easily
if they were once willing to learn.

She had a set of mental arithmetic problems ready which she propounded
to them next, some of them difficult and some easy enough for the
youngest child who could think, and she timed their answers and wrote on
the board the names of those who raised their hands first and had the
correct answers. The questions were put in a fascinating way, many of
them having curious little catches in them for the scholars who were not
on the alert, and Timothy presently discovered this and set himself to
get every one, coming off victorious at the end. Even Jed roused
himself and was interested, and some of the girls quite distinguished
themselves.

When a half-hour of this was over she put the word "TRANSFIGURATION" on
the blackboard, and set them to playing a regular game out of it. If
some of the school-board had come in just then they might have lifted up
hands of horror at the idea of the new teacher setting the whole school
to playing a game. But they certainly would have been delightfully
surprised to see a quiet and orderly room with bent heads and knit
brows, all intent upon papers and pencils. Never before in the annals of
that school had the first day held a full period of quiet or
orderliness. It was expected to be a day of battle; a day o