he rather deferred to her.
Whether it was that she now had a feeling of this, or that there was
something in the influence of his presence, his voice and manner, which
removed all constraint, Janet had not the least difficulty in talking.
She told him how the teacher at the school "boarded round," what an
unnecessary number of classes Miss Porter had for so small a number of
pupils,--although it was difficult to remedy the matter by "setting
back" certain children, because their proud mothers would object to
such a leveling,--and how the Blodgett children, four of them, all came
to school on the back of one buckskin pony, the youngest having to hold
on tight to keep from slipping off at the tail. "Buckskin,"; it
seemed, had won quite a place in Janet's affections, although he was
the worst behaved horse that came to school. He used to graze in the
yard till school was out,--the other horses being staked out on the
prairie,--and he had become so familiar that he would sometimes go so
far as to put his head in at the window in hope of being fed. And
Janet could not see, considering that Texas horses were used to being
staked out, what reason there had been for building a fence around a
school that stood out on open prairie, unless it was, perchance, that
the Texans thought they ought to have a corral to herd the children in.

While she was thus going on, there came from the corral a bleat in the
awe-inspiring tone of _Fa_, and this was followed by a succession of
bleats which reminded her of nothing so much as a child getting its
hands on the keyboard of an organ. Steve, as if suddenly admonished of
something, rose to his feet, excused himself, and disappeared in the
direction of the corral.

With the place before her temporarily vacant, and unable to see out of
her circle of light except by looking upward, Janet instinctively
lifted her eyes to the scene above. Thousands and thousands of stars
made the night big and beautiful. They were so clear and so lively, as
if they took joy in their shining. A mild southern breeze gave the
night motion and perfume. Janet took a deep breath which was hardly a
sigh; it was rather a big drink of air and the final suspiration of all
her worries. As she took in more deeply the constellated heavens and
the free fresh spirit of the roaming air, she began to feel that she
would rather like to be a sheep-herder herself. From looking at so
many, her mind turned back to her selecte