Elizabeth Leverett interviewed Dame Wilby beforehand.  The woman came half a day on Monday to wash and she hardly knew how to spend half an hour, but when she found Miss Winn was going, she loftily relegated the whole business to her.

Dame Wilby lived in an old rambling house, already an eyesore to the finer houses in Lafayette Street, but the Dame was obstinate and would not sell.  “It was going to last her time out.  She was born here when it was only a lane, and she meant to be buried from here.”  Once it had been quite a flourishing school; but newer methods had begun to supersede it.  It was handy for the small children about the neighborhood, it took them over the troublesome times, it gave their mothers a rest, and kept them out of mischief.  And the old dames were thorough, as far as they went.  Indeed, some of the mothers had never gone any farther.  They could cast up accounts, they could weigh and measure, for they had learned all the tables.  They could spell and read clearly, they knew all the common arts of life, and how to keep on learning out of the greater than printed books experience.

Dame Wilby might have been eighty.  No one remembered her being young.  Her husband was lost at sea and she opened the school, worked in her garden, saved until she had cleared her small old home, and now was laying up a trifle every year.  She was tall and somewhat bent in the shoulders, very much wrinkled, with clear, piercing light blue eyes and snowy hair.  She always wore a cap and only a little line of it showed at the edge of her high forehead.  Her frocks were made in the plainest style, skirts straight and narrow, and she always wore a little shoulder shawl, pinned across the bosom white in the summer, home-dyed blue in the winter.

Some children were playing tag in the unoccupied lot next door.  The schoolroom door opened at the side.  There were two rows of desks, with benches for the older children, two more with no desks for the A B C and spelling classes.  The rest they learned in concert, orally.  The dame had a table covered with a gray woollen cloth, some books, an inkstand, a holder for pens and pencils, and the never-failing switch.

“Yes,” she answered to Miss Winn’s explanation.  “Miss Leverett was telling about her.  I was teaching school here when she was born, and then the captain took her away to the Ingies again.”  Most folks pronounced it that way.  “Rather meachin’ little thing I s’pose it was the climate over there.  They say it turns the skin yellow.  Let’s see how you read, sissy?”

She read several verses out of the New Testament quite to the dame’s satisfaction.  Then about spelling.  The second word, in two syllables, floored her.  Had she ciphered?  No.  Did she know her tables?  No.  The capital of the state?  That she could answer.  When the war broke out?  When peace was declared?

“I’ll ask Cousin Leverett,” she answered, in nowise abashed by her ignorance.  “He tells me a great many things.”

“You must study it out of books.  I s’pose she’s going to live here?  She’s not going back to the Ingies?  I heard the captain was coming home.”

“He is settling up his affairs,” was the quiet answer.

Dame Wilby looked the child all over.

“You’ll sit on that bench,” she said.  Then she rang the bell and the children trooped in, staring at her.  The little boys four of them were on the seat back of her, on her seat she made the fifth.  Betty Upham was in the desk contingent.

They repeated the Lord’s prayer in concert.  Then lessons were given out.  The larger girls read.

“You can come and read with this class;” nodding to Cynthia.

She was not a regularly bashful child, but she flushed as the children stared at her.  They sometimes wore their Sunday white frock one or two days at school.  Cynthia was so used to her clothes, cared so little about them that they were rarely in her mind.  But this universal attention annoyed her.

“’Tend to your books, children.”

Cynthia acquitted herself finely, rather too much so, the dame thought.  She would talk to her about it.  A girl didn’t want to read as if she was a minister preaching a sermon.

Then she was given a very much “dog’s-eared” spelling-book to study down a column.  Another class read some easy lesson; a story about a dog that interested her so much that she forgot to study.  While the older children were doing sums one little boy after another came up to the desk and spelled from a book.  One’s attention wandered and the dame hit him a sharp rap.  Tables followed, eight and nine times; dry measure, and then questions were asked singly.  Some few missed.  Cynthia followed the spelling where they went up and down.  Then the larger ones were dismissed for recess.

“Cynthy Leverett, come up here and see how many words you can spell.  You ought to be ashamed, a big girl like you staying behind in next to the baby class.”

Cynthia’s face was scarlet.  Alas!  She had been so interested watching and listening she had not studied at all.  But the words were rather easy and she did know all but two.

“Now you take the next line and those two over again.  See if you can’t get them all learned by noon.”

The next little girl, who could not have been more than six, missed a number.  She had a queer drawl in her voice.

“What did I tell you, Jane Mason?  And you have missed more than two.  Hold out your hand!”

The switch came down on the poor little hand with an angry swish.  Cynthia winched.

“Now you go back and study.  No going out to play for you this morning.  Jane Mason, you’re the biggest dunce in school.”

The two other girls did better.  Then the bell rang and the girls came in with flushed and laughing faces.

Cynthia studied her two words over until they ceased to have any meaning.  At twelve they were all dismissed.

“Isn’t she a hateful old thing?” said Janie Mason, when they were outside of the door.  “I wish I was big enough to strike back.  I don’t like school anyhow.  Do you?”

“I I don’t know.  I have never been before.”

Several of the other girls swarmed around her with curious eyes.

“What a pretty frock!” began Betty Upham.  “I suppose it’s your Sunday best, with all that work.”

“Betty said you were an Injun,” said another.  “I never saw an Injun who didn’t have coarse, straight, black hair, and yours is lightish and curls.  I’d so love to have curly hair.”

“I’m not the kind of Indians you have here,” she returned indignantly.  “I was born right here in Salem.  I’ve lived in Calcutta and in China, and been to Batavia, and ever so many places.”

“Then you ain’t an Injun at all!  Betty, how could you?”

“Well, that’s what some of them said.  Maybe your mother was an Injun!” looking as if she had fixed the uncertain suspicion.

“No, she wasn’t.  She lived here part of the time.  She was born in Boston.”

They glanced at each other in a kind of upbraiding fashion.

“And you had to be put with the little children!  Aren’t there any schools in that place you came from?  It’s a heathen country.  Our minister prays for it.  Don’t you have any churches either?  What do people do when they are grown up if they never go to school?”

“Are you coming stiddy?”

“Is Mr. Chilian Leverett your real relation?”

“Oh, tell me have you any other frock as pretty as this?  My sister Hetty has a beautiful one, all lace and needlework.  She’s saving it to be married in.”

“Martha, I dare you to a race!”

Two girls ran off as fast as they could.  Betty Upham caught Cynthia’s arm.

“I didn’t say you were a real Injun.  Debby Strang always gets things mixed up.  But it is something queer ”

“East India;” in a tone of great dignity.

“Where the ships are coming from all the time?  Is it prettier than Salem?”

“It’s so different you can’t tell.  We do not have hardly any winter.  And there are vines and flowers and temples to heathen gods, and the people are yellow and brown.”

“Do you suppose you will ever grow clear white?”

Cynthia had half a mind to be angry.  Even Miss Elizabeth was fair, and Miss Eunice had such a soft, pretty skin.

“There, that’s your corner.  You’re coming this afternoon?”

“Oh, I suppose so.”

Miss Elizabeth was all bustle and hurry.  It was clouding up a little.  It hadn’t been a real fair day, and the hot sun had dried the clothes too quick.  She liked them to bleach on the line, it was almost as good as the grass.  And Miss Drake couldn’t stay and iron, they had sickness over to the Appletons and she had to go there.  Everything was out of gear.

“I’d help with the ironing, if you would like,” said Miss Winn.

“Well, the ironing isn’t so much;” rather ungraciously.  “You see, there were four blankets.  I never touch an iron to them, but shake them good and fold them, and let them lay one night, then hang them on the line in the garret.  The bulk of it was large.  And a good stiff breeze blows out wrinkles.  The wind hasn’t blown worth a Continental;” complainingly.

“Did you like the school?” Miss Winn inquired in the hall.

“No, I didn’t.  And I don’t seem to know anything;” in a discouraged tone.

“Oh, you will learn.”

It was warm in the afternoon.  Two of the boys were decidedly bad and were punished.  They positively roared.  Cynthia spelled, and spelled, and studied “One and one are two,” “one and two are three,” and after a while it dawned on her that it was just one more every time.  Why, she had known that all the time, only it hadn’t been put in a table.

It grew very tiresome after a while.  She asked if she couldn’t have recess with the big girls, but was sharply refused.  In truth the good dame grew very weary herself, and was glad when five o’clock came and she could go out in the garden and recruit her tired nerves.

The stage was stopping at the door.  Oh, how glad she was to see Cousin Leverett.  He smiled down in the flushed face.

“How did the school go?” he asked.

She hung her head.  “I don’t like it.  I have to be with the little class because I don’t know tables, but I learned all the one times.  That was easy enough when you came to see into it.  But nine and nine?”

“Eighteen,” he answered promptly.

“And you answered it right offhand!” She gave a soft, cheerful laugh.  “Oh, do you suppose I shall ever know so much?”

“There was a time when I didn’t know it.”

“Truly?” She looked incredulous.

“Truly.  And I had quite hard work remembering to spell correctly.”

“I studied two lines.  This morning I missed two words, but this afternoon I knew them all.  And I can’t write on the slate.  The pencil wabbles so, and then it gives an awful squeak that goes all over you.  And I can’t do sums.  And there’s all the tables to learn.  And I don’t like the teacher.  I wish Miss Eunice could teach me.  Or maybe Rachel might.”

“I might help you a little.  But you read well?”

“She said it was too too” she wrinkled up her forehead “too affected, like a play-actor.”

“Nonsense!” he cried disapprovingly.  “We will see about some other school presently.  Would you like to take a walk with me?  I’m tired of the long stage-ride.”

“Oh, so much!” She caught one hand in both of hers and gave a few skips of joy.

“Let us go over to the river.”

Of course, he should have gone in and announced their resolve.  But he was so used to considering only himself, and he realized that it must have been a tiresome day to her.  They went over Lafayette Street, which was only a lane, and then turned up the stream.

Oh, how sweet the air was with the odorous dampness and the smell of new growths, tree and grass.  The sun, low in the west, slanted golden gleams through the tree branches which chased each other over the grassy spaces, as if they were quite alive and at merry-making.  There were sedgy plants in bloom, jack-in-the-pulpit, and what might have been a lily, with a more euphonious name.  Iridescent flies were skimming about, now and then a fish made a stir and dazzle.  Squirrels ran up and down the trees and chattered, robins were singing joyously, the thrush with her soft, plaintive note.  She glanced up now and then and caught his eye, and he felt she was happy.  It was a delightful thing, after all, to render some one truly happy.  Perhaps children were more easily satisfied, more responsive.

“Oh,” he said presently, “we must go back or we will lose our supper, and Cousin Elizabeth will scold.”

“I shouldn’t think she would dare to scold you;” raising wondering eyes.

“Why not?” He wondered what reason she would give.

“Because you are a man.”

“She scolds Silas.”

“Oh, that is different.”

“How different?  We are both men.  He is quite as tall as I.”

“But you see well, he is something like a servant.  She tells him what to do, and if he doesn’t do it right she can find fault with it.  But you are well, the house is yours.  You can do what pleases you.”

“Quite reasoned out, little one;” and he laughed with an approving sound.

“It’s curious that you scold people you like, and other people may do the same thing and is it because you don’t dare to?  If it is wrong in the one place, why not in the other?”

“Perhaps politeness restrains us.”

“I don’t like people to scold.  Miss Eunice never does.”

“Eunice has a sweet nature.  Doesn’t Miss Winn ever scold you?”

“Well I suppose I am bad and wilful sometimes, and then she has the right.  But when you do things that do not matter ”

Miss Winn was walking in the garden.  Cynthia waved her hand, but walked leisurely forward.

“I couldn’t imagine what had become of you.”

“It was my fault,” interposed Chilian.  “I met her at the gate and asked her to go for a walk.”

“And with that soiled apron!”

“That came off the slate.  I hadn’t any desk.  It was hard to hold it on my knee.”

“You might have come in for a clean one.  Run upstairs and change it.”

But she was destined to meet Cousin Elizabeth in the hall.  The elder caught her arm roughly.

“Where have you been gadding to, bad girl?  Didn’t you know you must come straight home from school?  Here we have been worried half to death about you, and I’m tired as a dog, trotting ’round all day.  You deserve a good whipping;” and she shook her.  She would have enjoyed slapping her soundly.  But Chilian entered at that instant.

“She is going upstairs for a clean apron,” he said.  “I took her off for a walk.”

“She might have asked whether she could go or not,” snapped Elizabeth.  “She’s the most lawless thing!”

“It was my place.  Don’t blame the child!”

“Well, supper’s ready.”

She didn’t have her apron on quite straight and her hair was a little frowsy.  Elizabeth had proposed it should be cut short on the neck for the summer, but Miss Winn had objected.

“Such a great mop!  No child wears it!”

Cynthia came in quietly and took her place.  After her first cup of tea Elizabeth thawed a little, enough to announce that two of the Appleton children were ill, they thought with scarlet fever.

Chilian expressed some sympathy.

“And how was the school, Cynthia?  We thought you might have been kept in for some of your good deeds, as children are so seldom bad.”

“I I didn’t like it,” she answered simply.

“Children can’t have just what they like in this world,” was Elizabeth’s rejoinder.

“Nor grown people either,” was Chilian’s softening comment.  Then he changed the subject.  He had seen Cousin Giles, who proposed to pay them a visit, coming on some Saturday.

“Have you any lesson to learn?” he asked of Cynthia.  “If so, bring your book and come to my room.”

“Oh, thank you!” Her face was radiant with delight.

Where had she left her book?  Dame Wilby had told her to take it home and study.  Surely she had brought it oh, yes! she had put it just inside the gate under the great clump of ribbon grass.  If only Cousin Elizabeth’s sharp eyes had not seen it.  But there it was, safe enough.

She was delighted to go to Cousin Chilian’s room, though she never presumed.  She seemed to have an innate sort of delicacy that he wondered at.

The spelling was soon mastered.  It was the rather unusual words that puzzled her.  Then they attacked the tables and he practised her in making figures.  Like most children left to themselves, she printed instead of writing.

“Oh!” she cried with a wistful yet joyous emphasis, “I wish I could come to school to you.  And I’d like to be the only scholar.”

“But you ought to be with little girls.”

“I don’t like them very much.”

Then Miss Winn came for her.  “You are very good to take so much trouble,” she said.

“Oh, I like you so much, so much!” she exclaimed with her sweet eyes as well as her lips.

He recalled then the day on board the vessel, when she had besought in her impetuous fashion that he should kiss her.  She had never offered the caress since.  She was not an effusive child.

Her position at school was rather anomalous.  A younger woman might have managed differently.  There was a new scholar that rather crowded them on the bench.  And the boy back of her did some sly things that annoyed her.  He gave her hair a twitch now and then.  One day he dropped a little toad on her book, at which she screamed, though an instant after she was not at all afraid.  Of course, he was whipped for that, and for once she did not feel sorry.

“You’re a great ninny to be afraid of a toad not bigger than a button,” he said scornfully.  “I’ll get you whipped some day to make up for it, see if I don’t.”

Thursday was unfortunate and she was kept in for some rather saucy replies.  When she returned they were in the sitting-room and had been discussing some household matters.  She surveyed them with a courageous but indignant air.

“I’ve quit,” she exclaimed.  “I’m not going there to school any more.”

She stood up very straight, her eyes flashing.

“What!” ejaculated Cousin Elizabeth.

“Why, I’ve quit!  She wanted to make me say I was sorry and beg her pardon, and she threatened to keep me all night, but I knew some of you would come, at least Rachel.”

“And I suppose you were a saucy, naughty girl!”

“What happened?” asked Chilian quietly.

“Why, you see I went up to her table with the figures I had been making on my slate.  I’d done some of them over three times, for Tommy Marsh joggled my elbow.  Then I went back to my seat.  We’re crowded now, and I went to sit down and sat on the floor.  I do believe Sadie Green did it on purpose moved so there wasn’t room enough for me to sit.  And Tom laughed, then all the children laughed, and Dame Wilby said, ’Get up, Cynthy Leverett,’ and I said ’My name isn’t Cynthy, if you please, and I haven’t any seat to sit on if I do get up.’  And then the children laughed again, and I don’t quite know what did happen, but I was so angry.  Then she said all the children should stay in for laughing.  She called me to the desk and I went.  The slate was broken and I laid it on the table.  Then she said wasn’t I sorry for being saucy, and I said I wasn’t.  It was bad enough to fall on the floor, for I might have hurt myself.  Then she took up her switch, and I said:  ’You strike me, if you dare!’ Then she pushed me in a little closet place, and there I staid until after school was out.  Then she said, ’Would I tell Miss Leverett to come over?’ and I said Mr. Leverett was my guardian and I would tell him, but I wasn’t coming to school any more, and that Tommy Marsh pinched me and pulled my hair, and called me wild Indian.  And so I’ve quit.  You can’t make me go again.  I’ll run away first and go on some of the boats.”

There was a blaze of scarlet on her cheeks and her eyes flashed fire, but she stood up straight and defiant, when another child might have broken down and cried.  Chilian Leverett always remembered the picture she made small, dark, and spirited.

“No,” he exclaimed, “you need not go back.”  Then he rose and took her hand that was cold and trembling.  “You will not go back.  Let us find Miss Winn ”

“Chilian!” warned Elizabeth.

He led Cynthia from the room, up the stairs.  Miss Winn sat there sewing.  She clasped her arms about him, he could fairly feel the throb in them.

“Oh,” she cried with a strange sort of sweetness.  “I love you.  You are so good to me, and I have told you just the truth.”

Then she buried her face on Miss Winn’s bosom.

Chilian went downstairs.  He laughed, yet he was deeply touched by her audacity and bravery.

“Elizabeth,” he announced; “I will see Mrs. Wilby.  Let the matter die out, do not refer to it.  I did not think it quite the school for her.  We will find something else.”

“Chilian, I must make one effort for you and her.  Going on this way will be her ruin.  I should insist upon her going back to school and apologizing to Mrs. Wilby.  I wouldn’t let a chit like that order what a household of grown people should do and make them bow down to her.  You will be sorry for it in the end.  You have had no experience with children, you have seen so few.  And a man hasn’t the judgment ”

His usually serene temper was getting ruffled, and with such characters the end is often obstinacy.

“If she is to make a disturbance here, become a bone of contention with us, I will send her away.  Cousin Giles is taking a great interest in her.  There are good boarding-schools in Boston, or she and Miss Winn could have a home together under his supervision.  There is enough to provide for them.”

“And you would turn her over to that half-heathen woman!” in a horrified tone.  “Then I wash my hands of the matter.  Send her to perdition, if you will.”