nd alluring to
her. She had been able to compute correctly how long eighteen cows
could feed on a pasture that twenty-six horses had lived on eighteen
days last year, the grass growing day and night, three cows eating as
much as one horse; in Literature they were studying "The Lady of the
Lake," and Alan-bane's description of the fight had intoxicated her
with its stirring enthusiasm. Knowledge was a passion with Pearl;
"meat and drink to her," her mother often said, and now how was she
to give it up?

She sat in her seat and idly watched the children file out. She heard
them racing down the stairs. Outside, children called gaily to each
other, the big doors slammed so hard the windows rattled and at last
all was still with the awful stillness of a deserted school.

It was a warm day in March, a glorious day of melting sunshine, when
the rivers begin to think of spring, and 'away below the snow the
little flowers smile in their sleep.

Pearl went to the window and looked out at the familiar scene. Her
own home, straggling and stamped with poverty, was before her. "It
does look shacky but it's home, and I love it, you bet," she said.
"Nobody would ever know to look at it the good times that goes on
inside." Then she turned and looked around the schoolroom, with its
solemn-looking blackboards, and its deserted seats littered with
books. The sun poured into the room from the western windows and
a thousand motes danced in its beams. The room smelled of chalk
and ink and mothballs, but Pearl liked it, for to her it was the
school-smell.

"I'll purtend I am the teacher," Pearl said, "just for once. I'll
never be one now; I'm goin' to give up that hope, at least I'm goin'
to try to give it up, maybe, but I'll see how it feels anyway." She
sat in the teacher's chair and saw the seats filled with shadowy
forms. She saw herself, well-dressed and educated, earning a salary
and helping to raise her family from ignorance and poverty.

"I am Miss Watson now," she said, as she opened the register and
called the names of her own making. "Me hair is done like Miss
Morrison's, all wadded out around me head, wid a row of muskrat
houses up the back, the kind I can take off and comb on the palm o'
me hand. I've got gold-fillin' in me teeth which just shows when I
laugh wide, and I'll do it often, and I've got a watch wid a deer's
head on it and me name on it, R. J. P. Watson, and I can talk like
they do in books. I won't ever say 'I'