iberry Teacher's blue woolen
shoulder because her pet fairy-book was missing, she had caught several
strands of the Teacher's yellow hair in her anguish, much to the hair's
detriment.

It was straight, heavy hair, and it would have been of a dense and
fluffy honey-color, only that it was tarnished for lack of the constant
sunnings and brushings which blonde hair must have to stay its best
self. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream,
was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it with
creams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very stupid things to
eat one gets at a dairy-lunch and boarding-house. Some of the assistants
did interesting cooking over the library gas-range, but the Liberry
Teacher couldn't do that because she hadn't time.

She went on defiantly thinking about her looks. It isn't a noble-minded
thing to do, but when you might be so very, very pretty if you only had
a little time to be it in--"Yes, I _might_!" said Phyllis to her
shocked self defiantly.... Yes, the shape of her face was all right
still. Hard work and scant attention couldn't spoil its pretty oval. But
her eyes--well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous and
childlike as they were back in the New England country, when you have
been using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had been
such _nice_ eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long and
blue and wondering! And now the cataloguing had heavied the lids and
etched a line between her straight brown brows. They weren't decorative
eyes now ... and they filled with indignant self-sympathy. The Liberry
Teacher laughed at herself a little here. The idea of eyes that cried
about themselves was funny, somehow.

"Direct from producer to consumer!" she quoted half-aloud, and wiped
each eye conscientiously by itself.

"Teacher! I want a liberry called 'Bride of Lemon Hill!' demanded a
small citizen just here. The school teacher, she says I must to have
it!"

Phyllis thought hard. But she had to search the pinned-up list of
required reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed
"The Bride of Lammermoor" on a thirteen-year-old daughter of Hungary.

"This is it, isn't it, honey?" she asked with the flashing smile for
which her children, among other things, adored her.

"Yes, ma'am, thank you, teacher," said the thirteen-year-old gratefully;
and went off to a corner, where she sat till closing