k
at her.

"Come in," said Miss Scattergood. "Scholars, attention! Eyes forward!"

She might as well have spoken to the wind that breathed at the open
window and fluttered the papers upon her desk. The older scholars paid
the little school-mistress no attention whatsoever.

Janice felt some little confusion in passing down the aisle, knowing
herself to be the center of all eyes. Miss Scattergood dismissed the
class before her briefly, and offered Janice a chair on the platform.

"I guess you're Jason Day's niece," said the teacher, pleasantly,
taking her visitor's hand. "Mother was telling me about you."

"Yes, Miss Scattergood," Janice replied. "I am Janice Day, and when you
have time I'd love to have you examine me and see where I belong in your
school."

"You--you are too far advanced for our school," said the little teacher,
with some hesitation and a flush that was almost painful. "Especially if
you came from a place where the schools are graded as in the city."

"Greensboro has good schools," Janice said. "I was in my junior year at
high."

"Oh, dear me!" Miss Scattergood cried, hastily. "We don't have any such
system here, of course. The committee doesn't demand it of me. I have to
teach the little folks as well as the big. We go as far as our books
go--that is all."

She placed several text-books before Janice. It was plain that she was
not a little afraid of her visitor, for Janice was much different from
the staring, "pig-tailed" misses occupying the back seats of the
Poketown school.

Janice was hungry for young companionship, and she liked little Miss
Scattergood, despite the uncontradicted fact that "she didn't have no
way with her."

While she conned the text-books the school-mistress had placed before
her, Janice watched proceedings with interest. She had never even heard
of an ungraded country school before, much less seen one. The older
pupils, both girls and boys, seemed to be a law unto themselves; Miss
Scattergood had little control over them.

The teacher called another class of younger scholars. This class
practically took all of her attention and she did not observe the four
boys who carried on a warfare with "snappers" and "spitballs" in the
back seats; of the predatory campaign of the lanky, white-haired youth
who slid from seat to seat of the smaller boys, capturing tops, marbles,
and other small possessions dear to childish hearts, threatening by
gesture and writhing lips a "sl