ld be accomplished in so
faultless a manner.

Fired with honest but misguided zeal, I one morning entered the lists
against Miss Friggs in a vain attempt to make my own bed; but those
horrid feathers acted like the things in the Philosopher's Scales, for
when some were up, others were down; neither north nor south, east nor
west would agree to terms of equality, and it was impossible to bring
them to any sort of compromise.

I related my experience to Mrs. Bull; and when I assured her that I had
crawled all over the bed in the vain attempt to bring some order out of
chaos, she was more amused, in her quiet way, than I had ever known her
to be. She desired me, however, to leave the room, to her in future, as
she enjoyed it, and I could not be expected to do everything. I did not
interfere with her measures again.

A lesson had been given me to look over; and on Mr. Summers's first
visit to me, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, I felt as if he had been a dentist
with evil designs on my largest grinder. He was as cool as though he had
been fifty and I five, and behaved himself generally as though it were a
very common thing for youthful principals to give private lessons to
their young lady-teachers.

Mr. Bull had made a fire, which was another talent that I discovered in
him; and Mrs. Bull had given the room as much of a look of comfort as a
room can have that is very seldom used. The good woman had even placed a
dish of apples and doughnuts on a table in the corner--which, she said,
were always on hand when Mr. Bull was paying his addresses to her; but
the family did not appear to put any such construction on Mr. Summer's
visits to me. I had told them that we had a great deal of school
business in common; and they seemed to think it quite natural that we
should have.

And to business Mr. Summers proceeded immediately on his arrival,
throwing me into a state of complete confusion by asking me questions
not definitely set down in the book, and calmly allowing me to blunder
through to something like an end without the least interruption or
assistance. I, whose childhood had for some time been made miserable by
the question of a sharp schoolmate, 'Which is the heaviest--a pound of
lead or a pound of feathers?' and her calm persistence that they were
both alike, in spite of my passionate denial in favor of lead, was not
likely to distinguish myself at these sittings; and whatever I had
hitherto admired in Mr. Summers was now eclip