ience Mather was saying the seven-multiplication table, when she
heard a heavy step in the entry.

"That is Squire Bean," whispered her friend, Martha Joy, who stood at
her elbow.

Patience stopped short in horror. Her especial bugbear in mathematics
was eight-times-seven; she was coming toward it fast--could she
remember it, with old Squire Bean looking at her?

"Go on," said the teacher severely. She was quite young, and also
stood in some awe of Squire Bean, but she did not wish her pupils to
discover it, so she pretended to ignore that step in the entry. Squire
Bean walked with a heavy gilt-headed cane which always went clump,
clump, at every step; beside he shuffled--one could always tell who
was coming.

"Seven times seven," begun Patience trembling--then the door
opened--there stood Squire Bean.

The teacher rose promptly. She tried to be very easy and natural, but
her pretty round cheeks turned red and white by turns.

"Good-morning, Squire Bean," said she. Then she placed a chair on the
platform for him.

"_Good_-morning," said he, and seated himself in a lumbering way--he
was rather stiff with rheumatism. He was a large old man in a green
camlet cloak with brass buttons.

"You may go on with the exercises," said he to the teacher, after he
had adjusted himself and wiped his face solemnly with a great red
handkerchief.

"Go on, Patience," said the teacher.

So Patience piped up in her little weak soprano: "Seven times seven
are forty-nine. Eight times seven are"--She stopped short. Then she
begun over again--"Eight times seven"--

The class with toes on the crack all swayed forward to look at
her, the pupils at the foot stepped off till they swung it into a
half-circle. Hands came up and gyrated wildly.

"Back on the line!" said the teacher sternly. Then they stepped back,
but the hands indicative of superior knowledge still waved, the coarse
jacket-sleeves and the gingham apron-sleeves slipping back from the
thin childish wrists.

"Eight times seven are eighty-nine," declared Patience desperately.
The hands shook frantically, some of the owners stepped off the line
again in their eagerness.

Patience's cheeks were red as poppies, her eyes were full of tears.

"You may try once more, Patience," said the teacher, who was
distressed herself. She feared lest Squire Bean might think that it
was her fault, and that she was not a competent teacher, because
Patience Mather did not know eight-times