is hand at a history
of Virginia, and be careful not to put in anything that might offend
anybody, he could get it taught in every private school in the State.
But he said he'd be shot first."

"Perhaps he's a genius," said Virginia in a startled voice. "Geniuses
are always different from other people, aren't they?"

"I don't know," answered Susan doubtfully. "He talks of things I never
heard of before, and he seems to think that they are the most important
things in the world."

"What things?" asked Virginia breathlessly.

"Oh, I can't tell you because they are so new, but he seems on fire when
he talks of them. He talks for hours about art and its service to
humanity and about going down to the people and uplifting the masses."

"I hope he doesn't mean the negroes," commented Miss Priscilla
suspiciously.

"He means the whole world, I believe," responded Susan. "He quotes all
the time from writers I've never heard of, and he laughs at every book
he sees in the house. Yesterday he picked up one of Mrs. Southworth's
novels on mother's bureau and asked her how she could allow such immoral
stuff in her room. She had got it out of the bookcase to lend to Miss
Willy Whitlow, who was there making my dress, but he scolded her so
about it that at last Miss Willy went off with Mill's 'Essay on
Liberty,' and mother burned all of Mrs. Southworth's that she had in the
house. Oliver has been so nice to mother that I believe she would make a
bonfire of her furniture if he asked her to do it."

"Is he really trying to unsettle Miss Willy's mind?" questioned the
teacher anxiously. "How on earth could she go out sewing by the day if
she didn't have her religious convictions?"

"That's just what I asked him," returned Susan, who, besides being
dangerously clever, had a remarkably level head to keep her balanced.
"But he answered that until people got unsettled they would never move,
and when I wanted to find out where he thought poor little Miss Willy
could possibly move to, he only got impatient and said that I was trying
to bury the principle under the facts. We very nearly quarrelled over
Miss Willy, but of course she took the book to please Oliver and
couldn't worry through a line of it to save her soul."

"Did he say anything about his work? What he wants to do, I mean?" asked
Virginia, and her voice was so charged with feeling that it gave an
emotional quality to the question.

"He wants to write," replied Susan. "His w