s!

"She's smart, that kid--she's smart--I'll say that for her. There is
not a man in town who dare look me in the eye and take a rise like
that out of me, but she did it without a flicker. So I know I had her
mad or she wouldn't have said it, but wasn't she smooth about it?"

Then her professional pride asserted itself, reminding her that a
slight had been put upon her, and her mood changed.

"Of all the saucy little jades," she said to herself--"with the air of
a duchess, and the fine clothes of her! And to think that her mother
washed for me not so long ago, and that girl came for the clothes and
brought them back again! And now listen to her! You put your foot in
it, Pearl my young lady, when you rubbed Jane Crocks the wrong way,
for people cannot do that and get away with it! And remember I am
telling you."

When Pearl left Mrs. Crocks standing on the street she walked quickly
to the station, but arriving there with the yellow blank in her hand,
she found her intention of accepting a school in the North had grown
weak and pale. She did not want to go to North, or any place. She
suddenly wanted to stay. She would take a school some place near--and
see what was going to happen; and besides--she suddenly thought of
this--she must not decide on anything until she saw Mr. Donald, her
old teacher, and got his advice. It would not be courteous to do
anything until she saw him, and tomorrow was the day he wanted her to
go to the school to speak to the children. Why, of course, she could
not go---and so Pearl reasoned in that well-known human way of backing
herself up in the thing she wanted to do! So she tore off a couple of
blank forms and put them in her purse, and asked the agent if he knew
how the train from the East was, and he gave her the assurance that it
had left the city on time and was whoopin' it along through the hills
at Cardinal when last heard from--and stood a good chance of getting
in before night.

All the way home, Pearl tried to solve the tangle of thoughts that
presented themselves to her, but the unknown quantity, the "X" in this
human equation, had given her so little to work on, that it seemed
as though she must mark it "insufficient data" and let it go! But
unfortunately for Pearl's peace of mind it could not be dismissed in
that way.

One thing was evident--it was some sudden happening or suggestion that
had changed his attitude towards her, for there was no mistaking the
tenderness in hi