with spasms of apparently gratuitous
laughter that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss
Mary could get from him was, that someone had been "looking in the
winder." Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle
with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came
plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly
sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in
her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also,
that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was
amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored,
silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor
or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on
her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with
receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the
gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom,
her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And
then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all
unconsciously very happy.

It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged boys
came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,
which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary
compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At
the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm
dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both
embarrassed and angry. "If you carried more of that for yourself," she
said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes
to its owner, "you'd do better." In the submissive silence that followed
she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that
he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which
Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box seat to
the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
that