There was a back door at the other side of the kitchen. Not stopping
for the ceremony of leave-taking, Tillie slipped out of it to hurry
home before the stranger should reach the hotel.

Her heart beat fast as she hurried across fields by a short-cut, and
there was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. Her ears were tingling
with sounds to which they were unaccustomed, and which thrilled them
exquisitely--the speech, accent, and tones of one who belonged to that
world unknown to her except through books--out of which Miss Margaret
had come and to which this new teacher, she at once recognized,
belonged. Undoubtedly he was what was called, by magazine-writers and
novel-writers, a "gentleman." And it was suddenly revealed to Tillie
that in real life the phenomenon thus named was even more interesting
than in literature. The clean cut of the young man's thin face, his
pale forehead, the fineness of the white hand he had lifted to his hat,
his modulated voice and speech, all these things had, in her few
minutes' observation of him, impressed themselves instantly and deeply
upon the girl's fresh imagination.

Out of breath from her hurried walk, she reached the back door of the
hotel several minutes before the teacher's arrival. She had just time
to report to her aunt that Sister Jennie's mush was "all," and to reply
in the affirmative to the eager questions of Amanda and Rebecca as to
whether she had seen the teacher, when the sound of the knocker on the
front door arrested their further catechism.

"The stage didn't leave out whoever it is--it drove right apast," said
Aunty Em. "You go, Tillie, and see oncet who is it."

Tillie was sure that she had not been seen by the evicted applicant for
board, as she had been hidden behind the stove. This impression was
confirmed when she now opened the door to him, for there was no
recognition in his eyes as he lifted his hat. It was the first time in
Tillie's life that a man had taken off his hat to her, and it almost
palsied her tongue as she tried to ask him to come in.

In reply to his inquiry as to whether he could get board here, she led
him into the darkened parlor at the right of a long hall. Groping her
way across the floor to the window she drew up the blind.

"Just sit down," she said timidly. "I'll call Aunty Em."

"Thank you," he bowed with a little air of ceremony that for an instant
held her spellbound. She stood staring at him--only recalled to herself
and to