Sunday-school boy."

"Why, yes! take up the collection, and see who is absent, and so on. I
don't know all the names, perhaps, and, anyhow, I don't like to do that
when I have to teach!"

Artful Margaret! She had no mind to leave Bud floating around outside
the school-house, and though she had ostensibly prepared her lesson and
her blackboard illustration for the little children, she had hidden in
it a truth for Bud--poor, neglected, devoted Bud!

The inefficient old man who taught the older people that day gathered
his forces together and, seated with his back to the platform, his
spectacles extended upon his long nose, he proceeded with the questions
on the lesson-leaf, as usual, being more than ordinarily unfamiliar with
them; but before he was half through he perceived by the long pauses
between the questions and answers that he did not have the attention of
his class. He turned slowly around to see what they were all looking at,
and became so engaged in listening to the lesson the new teacher was
drawing on the blackboard that he completely forgot to go on, until Bud,
very important in his new position, rang the tiny desk-bell for the
close of school, and Margaret, looking up, saw in dismay that she had
been teaching the whole school.

While they were singing a closing hymn the room began to fill up, and
presently came the minister, walking importantly beside Mr. Tanner, his
chin flattened upward as usual, but bent in till it made a double roll
over his collar, his eyes rolling importantly, showing much of their
whites, his sermon, in an elaborate leather cover, carried conspicuously
under his arm, and the severest of clerical coats and collars setting
out his insignificant face.

Walking behind him in single file, measured step, just so far apart,
came the eight men from the bunk-house--Long Bill, Big Jim, Fiddling
Boss, Jasper Kemp, Fade-away Forbes, Stocky, Croaker, and Fudge; and
behind them, looking like a scared rabbit, Mom Wallis scuttled into the
back seat and sank out of sight. The eight men, however, ranged
themselves across the front of the room on the recitation-bench,
directly in front of the platform, removing a few small children for
that purpose.

They had been lined up in a scowling row along the path as the minister
entered, looking at them askance under his aristocratic yellow eyebrows,
and as he neared the door the last man followed in his wake, then the
next, and so on.

Margaret, in