of
life again.

The Watson family, when they were at last settled in their new seats,
did a great deal to relieve the bareness of the dingy school-room.
All at once the room seemed to be very much alive and stirring.

While the teacher was busy with the boys, Pearl's sharp eyes were
looking over her new schoolmates. Instinctively she knew that the
pale little girl ahead of her must be Libby Anne Cavers. She had
wondered often, since coming to the farm, how Libby Anne would regard
the Watson family. Would she think that they had taken away her old
home? Impulsively Pearl leaned over and presented Libby Anne with a
new slate-rag securely anchored by a stout string to the neck of a
small bottle filled with water. This new way of slate-cleaning had
not yet reached the Chicken Hill School, where the older method
prevailed, and as a result, Libby Anne's small slate-rag was dark
gray in colour and unpleasant in character, and nearly always lent to
her less provident neighbours.

Libby Anne turned her pale face and frightened eyes toward the big
new girl, and in that glance Pearl read all her sad child history.
Libby Anne was just what she had pictured her to be, little and thin
and scared. She put her hands on Libby Anne's thin shoulders and,
drawing her back, whispered in her ear: "I like ye, Libby Anne."

Libby Anne's face brightened, though she made no reply. However, in a
few minutes she pulled the cork from the little bottle and gave her
slate a vigorous cleaning with the new rag, and Pearl knew her
oblation of friendship had been favourably received.

Mr. Donald, the teacher, was a student of human nature, as every
successful teacher must be, and before the day was over he was sure
that in Pearl Watson he had a pupil of more than ordinary interest.
At the afternoon recess he called her to his desk and asked her about
her previous school experience.

Pearl told him frankly her hope and fears. "I want to learn," she
said. "I want to know things, because I love to learn, and besides, I
have to be able to tell the boys and Mary what's what. We're awful
poor, but we're happy, and there's none of us real stupid. All we
want is a chance. I just ache to know things. Do you ever?" she asked
him suddenly.

"I do, Pearl," he answered. "I do, indeed."

"Oh, well," she said, "I guess you know all of the things I'm
thinkin' about; but I suppose the farther a person goes the more they
see that they don't know.

"That's it,