Princess and her mother did, and
Mr. Pryor must have been fairly decent or Laddie never would have gone;
and the Princess came to our house to bring me things to eat, and ask
how mother was, and once to learn how she embroidered Sally's wedding
chemise, and social things like that; and when father acted as if he
liked her so much he hadn't a word to say, and mother seemed to begin
to feel as if Laddie and the Princess could be trusted to fix it up
about God; and the old mystery didn't matter after all; why, here
Shelley popped up with another mystery, and it belonged to us. But
whatever ailed that man I couldn't possibly think. It had got to be
him, for Shelley was so all right at Christmas, it made her look that
pretty we hardly knew her.

I was thinking about her until I scarcely could study my lessons, so I
could recite to Laddie at night, and not fall so far behind at school.
Miss Amelia offered to hear me, but I just begged Laddie, and father
could see that he taught me fifty things in a lesson that you could
tell to look at Miss Amelia, she never knew. Why, he couldn't hear me
read:

"We charged upon a flock of geese,
And put them all to flight
Except one sturdy gander
That thought to show us fight,"--

without teaching me that the oldest picture in all the world was made
of a row of geese, some of which were kinds we then had--the earth
didn't seem so old when you thought of that--and how a flock of geese
once wakened an army and saved a city, and how far wild geese could fly
without alighting in migration, and everything you could think of about
geese, only he didn't know why eating the same grass made feathers on
geese and wool on sheep. Anyway, Miss Amelia never told you a word but
what was in the book, and how to read and spell it. May said that
father was very much disappointed in her, and he was never going to
hire another teacher until he met and talked with her, no matter what
kind of letters she could send. He was not going to help her get a
summer school, and O my soul! I hope no one does, for if they do, I
have to go, and I'd rather die than go to school in the summer.

Leon came in about that time with more fox stories. Been in Jacob
Hood's chicken house and taken his best Dorking rooster, and father
said it was time to do something. He never said a word so long as they
took Deams', except they should have barn room for their geese, but
when anything was the matter at Hoods'