naturally beautiful old town.

Janice realized that she was a mark for all idle eyes. Strangers were
not plentiful in Poketown.

She came at length in sight of the school. It was set in the middle of a
square, ugly, unfenced yard, without a tree before it or a blooming bush
or vine against its dull red walls. The sun beat upon it hotly, and it
did seem as though the builders must have intended to make school as
hateful as possible to the girls and boys who attended.

The windows and doors were open, and a hum came from within like that of
a swarming hive of bees. Janice went quietly to the nearest door,
mounted the steps, and looked in.

She had by chance come to the girls' entrance. The scholars' backs were
toward her and Janice could look her fill without being observed.

There was a small class reciting before the teacher's desk--droning away
in a sleepy fashion. The older scholars, sitting in the rear of the
room, were mainly busy about their own private affairs; few seemed to be
conning their lessons.

Several girls were busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of
them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably
quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the
amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy
which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had
raised the covers of her geography like a screen, and was busily engaged
in writing a letter behind it, on robin's-egg-blue paper.

At the far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her
flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at
all the sort of a person--in appearance, at least--that Janice expected
her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school--and such a
school as Poketown's--for twenty years, should have fitted the
well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But
Amarilla Scattergood did not.

She was a little, light-haired, pink-cheeked lady, with more than a few
claims to personal attractiveness yet left. She had her mother's
birdlike tilt to her head when she spoke, her eyes were still bright,
and her complexion good.

These facts were visible to Janice even from the doorway.

When she knocked lightly upon the door-frame, Miss Scattergood looked up
and saw her. A little hush fell upon the school, too, and Janice was
aware that both girls and boys were turning about in their seats to loo