Belle had sent light.

"You never saw a worse home," says Miss Belle. "Her mother was woefully
ignorant of everything in the way of home-making. The children were
wretchedly dressed. The house was barrenness itself--no shades, no
curtains, no decorations of any kind. It was pathetic. When she came to
school neither she nor her mother could sew a stitch."

Marguerite, an apt girl with her fingers, eagerly learned the needlework
lessons of the school. She taught her mother to sew, while she herself
made portieres and curtains, lightening up the old home with a rare new
beauty.

Here again is Lillie, who is very slow at needlework and arithmetic, but
who has put the family diet on a wholesome basis by learning to cook
some of the most delicious, nourishing dishes. Her bread--the best in
Fayette County--is light as a feather. Hannah comes back after leaving
school to learn how to ply her needle. Until a year ago Christmas she
could not sew a stitch; now her stitches are so neat as to be almost
invisible. Mrs. Hawly, aroused to enthusiasm by her thirteen-year-old
daughter, has come to school, learned plain and fancy sewing, and
started to make her own and her daughter's clothes. Everywhere are the
marks of a teacher's handiwork stamped indelibly on the lives of her
scholars and their families. Small wonder that the old gentleman on the
board was loath to part with Miss Belle!

VII Winning Over the Families

With supreme joy Miss Belle tells of her conquest of the fathers of her
boys and girls--her family, as she calls it. "The children were very
poorly cared for," she says. "The fathers spent the money for whiskey,
and the mothers lacked the means and the knowledge to clothe the
children better. Sometimes they were pitiful in their poor shoes and
thin clothes. Well, sir, we got up a Christmas entertainment, and,
except for one or two, the children wore the same clothes they had been
coming to school in all winter--shabby, patched and dirty as some of
them were. They stood up there, though, one and all, to do their turns
and speak their pieces, and their fathers were ashamed. They saw their
children in old clothes, and the children of some of the neighbors all
fixed up, and they just couldn't stand it.

"It surely did make a difference the next year." Miss Belle's cheery
face broadened with a satisfied smile. "The men didn't say a word--you
know our men aren't in the habit of saying very much--but they went to
town t