had one," said Pete. "Why?"

"Girl," said the trouble-shooter. "Goes to school from the farm where the
Western Union brace is used at the road."

"Nils Hansen's girl?" asked Pete.

"Toppy little filly," said the lineman, "with silver mane--looks like
she'd pull a good load and step some."

"M'h'm," grunted Pete. "Bettina Hansen. Looks well enough. What about
her?"

Again the county superintendent, seated on the bench, pricked up her ears
that she might learn, mayhap, something of educational interest.

"I never wanted to be a school-teacher as bad," continued the shooter of
trouble, "as I did when this farmer got to the low place in the road with
the fair Bettina this afternoon when they was comin' home from school. The
water was all over the road----"

"Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster," said Pete. "I bet him it would
overflow."

"Well, if I was in the professor's place, I'd be glad to pay the bet,"
said the worldly lineman. "And I'll say this for him, he rose equal to the
emergency and caved the emergency's head in. He carried her across the
pond, and her a-clingin' to his neck in a way to make your mouth water.
She wasn't a bit mad about it, either."

"I'd rather have a good cigar any ol' time," said Pete. "Nothin' but a
yaller-haired kid--an' a Dane at that. I had a dame once up at Spirit
Lake----"

"Well, I must be drivin' on," said the lineman. "Got to get up a lecture
for Professor Irwin to-morrow--and maybe I'll be able to meet that
yaller-haired kid. So long!"

The county superintendent recognized at once the educational importance of
the matter, when one of her country teachers adopted the policy of calling
in everybody available who could teach the pupils anything special, and
converting the school into a local Chautauqua served by local lecturers.
She made a run of ten miles to hear the trouble shooter's lecture. She saw
the boys and some of the girls give an explanation of the telephone and
the use of it. She heard the teacher give as a language exercise the next
day an essay on the ethics and proprieties of eavesdropping on party
lines; and she saw the beginning of an arrangement under which the boys of
the Woodruff school took the contract to look after easily-remedied line
troubles in the neighborhood on the basis which paid for a telephone for
the school, and swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating for
general purposes. Incidentally, she saw how really educational was the