I won't go to that school any more. If
there was some other--only--only I wish you could teach me until I could
get up straight in all the things, so the other children wouldn't laugh
when I made blunders. I suppose it does sound funny;" and a smile
hovered about the seriousness.

"We will consider another school," he returned kindly, smiling himself
at the remembrance of the tempest of yesterday.

She persuaded Rachel to go out to walk and they went over to the bridge.
She had been so interested in the story of it. Before it had faded from
the minds of men it was to be splendidly commemorated as a point of
interest in the old town.

"I like real stories," she said. "I don't understand about the war, but
it is fine to think the Salem men made the British soldiers go back when
all the while the cannon and other arms were hidden away. You don't
mind, Rachel, if the Colonists did beat England, do you? I'm a Colonist,
you know."

"That is long ago, and we are all friends now. I think the Colonists
were very brave and persevering and they deserved their liberty. I have
heard your father talk about the war."

"Oh, when do you suppose he will come? It seems so long to wait."

Rachel smiled to keep the tears out of her eyes.

Chilian Leverett made a call and a brief explanation to Dame Wilby. She
admitted she had been hasty, but the children were unusually trying. She
was getting to be an old body and maybe she hadn't as much patience as
years ago. Cynthia said so many odd things that the children _would_
giggle. She was slow in some things, and it seemed hard for her to learn
tables, but she was not a bad child.

So the tempest blew over. Elizabeth preserved a rather injured silence,
but Eunice was cheerful and ready to entertain Cynthia with stories of
the time when she was a little girl. Chilian arranged for her to spend
most of the mornings with him when he was at home. She liked so very
much to hear him read. The histories of that time were rather dry and
long spun out, but he had a way of skipping the moralizing and the
endless disquisitions and adding a little more vividness to people and
incidents. It inspired him to watch her face changing with every
emotion, her eyes deepening or brightening, and the slight mark in her
forehead where lines of perplexity crossed. Then they would talk it all
over. Often he was puzzled with her endless "whys" that he could not
rightly explain to a child's limited understanding.