s; and apparently he had prevailed, for he stooped under
the weight of a great burden, in which Hester recognised a blackboard, an
easel, a coloured globe, and sundry articles of school furniture very
cleverly lashed together and slung across his shoulder by a stout cord.
He was smiling, and she smiled too, moved perhaps by the sight of these
familiar objects in a strange land.

"If you'm bound for Troy, you may so well let me carry it, miss.
There's a terrible steep hill to go up, and a pound or two's weight won't
make no difference to what I got here."

She had taken up her bag resolutely and was moving on. The young man--it
was most awkward--also moved on, and in step with her. She compressed
her lip, wondering how to hint that she did not desire his company.
A glance told her that he was entirely without guile, that he had made his
offer in mere good-nature. How might she dismiss him and yet avoid
hurting his feelings?

"They argued me down at the station," he went on. "Would have it the
traps couldn' possibly be in the van. But I wasn't going to have my walk
for nothing if I could help it. 'Give me leave to look,' said I; and I
was right, you see!"

He nodded his head as triumphantly as his burden allowed. It weighed him
down, and the stoop gave his eyes, when he smiled, an innocent roguish
slant. Hester noted that he wore rings in his brown ears, and somehow
these ornaments made him appear the more boyish.

"But what are you doing with a blackboard and easel?" she asked.

"They're for old Mother Butson. She lives with my mother and keeps
school. Tidy little outlay for her, all this parcel! but she must move
with the times, poor soul."

"Then hers is not a Board School?--since she is buying these things for
herself."

"Board School? Not a bit of it. You're right there, miss: we're the
Opposition." He laughed, showing two rows of white regular teeth.

"Are you a teacher too?"

She had no sooner asked the question than she knew it to be ridiculous.
A teacher, in blue jersey and earrings! He laughed, more merrily than
ever.

"Me, miss? My name's Trevarthen--Tom Trevarthen: and I'm a seaman;
ordinary till last voyage, but now A.B." He said this with pride: of what
it meant she had not the ghost of a notion. "A man don't need scholarship
in my way o' life; but, being on shore for a spell, you see, miss,
I'm helping the old gal to fight the School Board. 'Tis hard on her,
too."

"What is