places and eat with us; I am
sure we will all have a better time."

Saylor stopped eating long enough to add;--"Do, it will seem like a
Christmas dinner in the summertime."

While Caleb remarked;--"He's coming along right peart."

Mary, with a laugh and blush and an appreciative smile at Mr. Cornwall,
added a place for her mother and Susie, while she served the supper.

Cornwall, who had paid little attention to the girl, furtively watching
her, was impressed by her competence and winsomeness. She was a healthy
sun-browned brunette of eighteen; had attended the Pineville graded
school for three years and the summer before passed the examination and
qualified as a teacher. She had been given the school at the forks of
the creek and was paid a salary of thirty-five dollars a month, most of
which went to pay her father's taxes and for books.

The children of her school were of divers ages and sizes. There were
lank boys taller than Mary and little girls that needed to be cuddled
and mothered. The native children, mostly a tow-headed lot, were easily
distinguished from the children of the families at the mines, whose
parents were from Naples or Palermo.

Not even the girls from Southern Italy had blacker hair or more dreamy
eyes than Mary's. Hers was a seeming nature and appearance made of a
composite of the girls of her school; natives of the hills and the
aliens of the blue Mediterranean.

Some of the foreign boys who knew little English were carefully grounded
in mathematics and certain physical sciences. Their proficiency made it
a difficult task for their immature teacher. She was aware of her
limitations and struggled faithfully to overcome them, spending many
hours to qualify herself in mathematics and as a grammarian.

That night, as the others were grouped about the door, talking or
listening to the rain, she sat near a table on which burned a small
unshaded oil lamp, studying out some grievous problems to her, in the
third arithmetic.

Cornwall, noting her worried expression and how persistently she applied
a slate rag, asked Susie, who sat near the table, to change places with
him, and moving the chair near Mary's took the slate and by a few
suggestions gave just the needed assistance; and in such a concise way
that the quick though untrained mind of the girl found no further
difficulties in solving the other problems of the lesson.

"Thanks, Mr. Cornwall, for helping me. At least tomorrow I will have