long before I found out that it was the girls who did
most of the tale-bearing. No wonder, either! They weren't very busy in
school, and they had nothing much to do at home except to listen and
talk. Really, they hadn't any decent interest in life. Of course there
was no use in saying anything, but I felt that if I could get them busy
at something they liked they would stop talking. It wasn't enough to
start them at dressmaking, either, but when I started in on hard, fancy
work designs I had them. They made pretty clothes, embroidered them;
made lace and doilies. Most of the girls can pick up a new Irish-lace
pattern from a fashion-book as easily as I can, and they are rabid for
new patterns. The same girls who did most of the tale-bearing are busy
at work, and I find them swapping patterns and recipes instead of
stories."

While the girls patch, darn, crochet, hem, knit, weave baskets, make
garments and do the various kinds of "busy work," the boys clean the
school yard, plant walnut trees--Mrs. Faulconer, the County
Superintendent, is having the school children plant nut trees along all
the pikes--and do anything else which is not beneath their dignity.
"They have no work benches," lamented Miss Belle, "I hope they will get
them soon, although there is really no place to put them." Indeed, in a
little building packed with fifty children and the school-room furniture
the space is narrow.

Yet this little one-room building at Locust Grove has left such a mark
on the community that when the County School Board recently decided to
transfer Miss Belle to a larger school the member from her district
promptly resigned, and refused to be placated until every other member
of the board had apologized to him and promised to leave Miss Belle in
his school.

"We never saw the old gentleman mad before," said a neighbor. "But he
certainly was mad then. He had watched Miss Belle's work grow, and knew
what it had meant to the children; so when they proposed to take her
away he went right up in the air."

VI Marguerite

What wonder? He had seen the magic workings of a hand that felt the
pulse, judged the symptoms, and prescribed a sure-to-cure remedy for a
countryside full of ignorance, drunkenness, bitter hatreds and
never-ending quarrels. Within a stone's throw of his house he had seen
the transformation in the life of a little girl named Marguerite. Since
her birth she had lived in darkness, but into her desolate home Miss