e the
reason. You'll find articles in the farm papers if you look through the
card index. Now, how about the census in the adjoining districts?"

"There are more than two hundred within four miles on the roads leading
west," said a boy.

"My father and I counted up about a hundred beyond us," said Mary. "But I
couldn't get the exact number."

"Why," said Raymond, "we could find six hundred dairy cows in this
neighborhood, within an hour's drive."

"Six hundred!" scoffed Newton. "You're crazy! In an hour's drive?"

"I mean an hour's drive each way," said Raymond.

"I believe we could," said Jim. "And after we find how far we will have to
go to get enough cows, if half of them patronized the creamery, we'll work
over the savings the business would make, if we could get the prices for
butter paid the Wisconsin cooperative creameries, as compared with what
the centralizers pay us, on a basis of the last six months. Who's in
possession of that correspondence with the Wisconsin creameries?"

"I have it," said Raymond. "I'm hectographing a lot of arithmetic problems
from it."

"How do you do, Mr. Irwin!" It was the superintendent who spoke.

Jim's brain whirled little prismatic clouds before his vision, as he rose
and shook Jennie's extended hand.

"Let me give you a chair," said he.

"Oh, no, thank you!" she returned. "I'll just make myself at home. I know
my way about in this schoolhouse, you know!"

She smiled at the children, and went about looking at their work--which
was not noticeably disturbed, by reason of the fact that visitors were
much more frequent now than ever before, and were no rarity. Certainly,
Jennie Woodruff was no novelty, since they had known her all their lives.
Most of the embarrassment was Jim's. He rose to the occasion, however,
went through the routine of the closing day, and dismissed the flock, not
omitting making an engagement with a group of boys for that evening to
come back and work on the formalin treatment for smut in seed grains, and
the blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes.

"We hadn't time for these things," said he to the county superintendent,
"in the regular class work--and it's getting time to take them up if we
are to clean out the smut in next year's crop."

They repeated Whittier's _Corn Song_ in concert, and school was out.

Alone with her in the old schoolhouse, Jim confronted Jennie in the flesh.
She felt a sense of his agitation, but if she had known the po