le ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.

"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.

"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."

"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."

"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid
dunno enough to teach a cow."

Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy;
only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the
vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to
her lips.

"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.
"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been
talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter
_sot_ there, she's had the place so long."

"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer
vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.

"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.

"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said,
brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to
the teacher, Marty?"

"_Me?_ Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd
say not!"

"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."

"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter
be perlite ter no _girl_. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's
school--never, no more!"

"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o'
yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o'
your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."

Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a
more pleasant key.

"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro
the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the
lake is just _dear_."

"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I
reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."

It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty
volunteered:

"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a
girl would think 'twas pretty."

"Oh! I'd love to see that," dec