read first.

“Very well, Jessica. My pupils, I am sure, will all be glad to help their new teacher to-day by making suggestions. Now, if you will read where you left off last term, I shall better understand how to class you.”

“Oh, I am class A,” the small girl said proudly, “and Dixie Martin and Ken and Ira Jenkins are class B, and the rest are class C.”

“Indeed!” was all the new teacher said, but she was thinking that her predecessor had evidently succeeded in fulfilling all the requirements of the board. But why, then, had she left? Oh, she did recall that Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly had said that the last teacher had married a prospector, who, for a time, had been in the mountains near Woodfords.

Romance was something that interested Josephine Bayley, aged twenty years, not at all. She had never been in love and never would be, she was sure of that. She was going to be wedded to her profession. She had never even met a lad who could interest her, and surely if she had failed to find one in the city of New York, where she had many delightful friends, she would not find him in this wild, rugged mountain country.

And all the while these thoughts were idly passing through the brain of Josephine Bayley, her “smartest” pupil was stumbling and stuttering through a short story in the Fourth Reader. It was not until the little girl sat down and was casting a triumphant glance over toward the Martin corner that the new teacher, with a start, awakened from her reverie.

Dixie Martin read next, and with so much expression that Miss Bayley was both amused and interested. She believed, and truly, that the mother’s yearning to be an actress had descended as real talent to at least this one of her children.

“Dixie,” the new teacher said, “I wish you would remain in at recess. I want to speak to you.”

If there was a jealous tilt to the curly head of Jessica, Miss Bayley did not notice it. When the others had filed out, for fifteen minutes of freedom, the new teacher took the hand of Dixie and said earnestly: “Dear, why are you reading in a Third Reader? Here is a Sixth Reader. See if you couldn’t read that.”

The gold-brown eyes were glowing. “Oh, yes, ma’am, Miss Bayley, I could. I love reading. After supper every night I read to the children ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Oliver Twist’ and the Almanac. That’s all the books we have.”

There was a firmer line about the mouth of Josephine Bayley. She had in that moment decided that she would tutor at least this one of the Martins, out of school-hours. Over her free time, surely, the board would have no jurisdiction.