chin' at the Cove these eight years, an' I'd shame her myself any day
she likes wi' spellin' an' the lines; an' if there's ever a boy in a
school o' mine that'll gie me a floutin' answer such's I've heard her
take by the dozen, I'll warrant ye he'll get a birchin'; an' the
trustees think there's no teacher like Grizzy. I'm not afraid."

"Grizzy never had any great schoolin' herself," replied her mother,
piously. "There's no girl in all the farms that's had what ye've had,
Bel."

"It isn't the schoolin', mother," retorted little Bel. "The schoolin' 's
got nothin' to do with it. I'd teach a school better than Grizzy McLeod
if I'd never had a day's schoolin'."

"An' now if that's not the talk of a silly," retorted the quickly
angered parent. "Will ye be tellin' me perhaps, then, that them that
can't read theirselves is to be set to teach letters?"

Little Bel was too loyal at heart to her illiterate mother to wound her
further by reiterating her point. Throwing her arms around her neck, and
kissing her warmly, she exclaimed: "Eh, my mother, it's not a silly that
ye could ever have for a child, wi' that clear head, and the wise things
always said to us from the time we're in our cradles. Ye've never a
child that's so clever as ye are yerself. I didn't mean just what I
said, ye must know, surely; only that the schoolin' part is the smallest
part o' the keepin' a school."

"An' I'll never give in to such nonsense as that, either," said the
mother, only half mollified. "Ye can ask yer father, if ye like, if it
stands not to reason that the more a teacher knows, the more he can
teach. He'll take the conceit out o' ye better than I can." And good
Isabella McDonald turned angrily away, and drummed on the window-pane
with her knitting-needles to relieve her nervous discomfort at this
slight passage at arms with her best-beloved daughter.

Little Bel's face flushed, and with compressed lips she turned silently
to the little oaken-framed looking-glass that hung so high on the wall
she could but just see her chin in it. As she slowly tied her pink
bonnet strings she grew happier. In truth, she would have been a maiden
hard to console if the face that looked back at her from the quaint oak
leaf and acorn wreath had not comforted her inmost soul, and made her
again at peace with herself. And as the mother looked on she too was
comforted; and in five minutes more, when Little Bel was ready to say
good-by, they flung their arms aro