ong every time. Can _you_ see what's the matter?" and two
wet blue eyes looked into his through his spectacles, with an expression
which said plainly, "You are my last and only hope."

She was standing by the massive marble-topped table which was the
central feature of the parlor of their boarding-house. One plump
hand--with dimples where the knuckles should have been--rested upon the
unresponsive marble, in the other she held the slate. She was a teacher
of some of the lowest classes in Miss Christina Eldridge's academy for
young ladies, and only Miss Christina knew the almost fathomless depths
of her ignorance.

But her father had been a professor, and a widower; and shortly before
he died he had manifested an appreciation of the stately principal
which, but for his untimely death,--he was only seventy,--might have
expanded into "that perfect union of souls" for which her disciplined
heart secretly pined.

So when it was first whispered, and then exclaimed, that Professor May
had left nothing, absolutely nothing, for his daughter but a very small
life-insurance premium and the furniture of their rented house, with a
little old-fashioned jewelry and silverware of the smallest possible
intrinsic value, Miss Christina called upon Miss May and told her that,
if she would accept it, there was a vacancy in the academy, with a
salary of two hundred dollars a year and board, but not lodging.

"And if you remain with me, my dear, as I hope you will, I can give you
a room next year, after the new wing is added; and, meanwhile, I know of
a vacant room, at two dollars a week, in a highly-respectable
lodging-house."

"You are very kind," replied Rosamond, in a quivering voice. "But indeed
I am afraid I don't know enough to teach even the very little girls. So
I'm afraid you'd better get somebody else. Don't you think you had?"

"No," said Miss Christina, patting the useless little hand which lay on
her lap. "You will only be obliged to hear spelling- and reading-lessons,
and teach the class of little girls who have not gone beyond the first
four rules of arithmetic, and perhaps you will help them to play on
their holidays: you could impart an element of refinement to their
recreations more readily than an older teacher could."

"Is _that_ all?" exclaimed Rosamond, almost cheerfully. "Oh, I can
easily do that much. I love little girls. I will be so good to all the
homesick ones. When shall I come?"

"As soon as you can, my