Peggy was washing
uncommon hard. Drew, he steps close to the tubs and says he, 'I tell
you, Mrs. Falstar, I don't know no better religion than getting the
spots out instead of slighting them. It's like the little Scotch girl
who said she knew when she got religion, for she had to sweep under the
mats.' Peggy was all a-grin, and Lord! how she went at it. Later, she
attacked the mats. It had set her thinking. I saw 'em hanging out, and
she beating them as she must often feel like beating Pete." A real laugh
greeted this, and Jock glowed with approval.

"And then what does that young lunger do, but gather in all the floating
population in the kid line, and play games with 'em, and read thrillers
to 'em up at the bungalow every evening. He's teaching them as wants to
learn, too. He's got Tate flamgasted. You see, the old man depended, for
the future, on them youngsters that haunted the tavern and got the
drippings that fell from within. The Black Cat Tavern Kindergarten is
busted, and the Bungalow stock is going up."

"Kindergarten? What's that, Jock?"

"Oh, it's a new-fangled idea in the way of schools. Sort of breaking up
the ground for later planting."

"Who told you about it?"

"Why--Drew's sister." Jock's face looked stern and he gazed into space.

"It's a splendid idea, Jock." Joyce's interest was keen enough now.
"Some one, even St. Ange's folks, should have seen how fine it is to
keep the children away from the tavern. How we have let everything
drift! Why Jock, if the boys and girls learn to hate the Black Cat; if
they are given something good, why of course St. Ange is going to be
another kind of place. Does Miss Drew help in teaching?"

"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear
unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells
'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed
brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a
career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with
his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour;
his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you
he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it
without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof
conclusive--them's her words--of Billy's redemption.

"I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was
all out of Billy. When he was obliged