and perhaps more influenced by
the man's manner than she had imagined, Mrs. Martin said nothing, but
let the day pass without dismissing the offenders. And on returning home
that evening she was considerably surprised to receive her landlady's
extravagant congratulations on the advent of her new assistant. "And
they do say, Mrs. Martin," continued that lady enthusiastically, "that
your just setting your foot down square on that Peaseley and that
Barstow, BOTH OF 'EM--and choosing your own assistant yourself--a plain
young fellow with no frills and fancies, but one that you could set
about making all the changes you like, was just the biggest thing you
ever did for Pine Clearing."

"And--they--consider him quite--competent?" said Mrs. Martin, with timid
color and hesitating audacity.

"Competent! You ask my Johnny."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Martin was somewhat formally early at the schoolhouse
the next morning. "Perhaps," she said, with an odd mixture of dignity
and timidity, "we'd better, before school commences, go over the lessons
for the day."

"I HAVE," he said quickly. "I told you ONE rehearsal was enough for me."

"You mean you have looked over them?"

"Got 'em by heart. Letter perfect. Want to hear me? Listen."

She did. He had actually committed to memory, and without a lapse, the
entire text of rules, questions, answers, and examples of the lessons
for the day.

CHAPTER IV.

Before a month had passed, Mr. Twing's success was secure and
established. So were a few of the changes he had quietly instituted.
The devotional singing and Scripture reading which had excited the
discontent of the Pike County children and their parents was not
discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some
secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under
Twing's really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and
pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting
song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to
promotion to the devotional exercises, where it eventually ousted the
objectionable "Hebrew children" on the question of melody alone. Grammar
was still taught at Pine Clearing School in spite of the Hardees and
Mackinnons, but Twing had managed to import into the cognate exercises
of recitation a wonderful degree of enthusiasm and excellence.
Dialectical Pike County, that had refused to recognize the governing
powers of the nominative ca