sess.

A fortunate rainy day, making the hauling of hay or the cutting of fall
wheat equally impossible, filled the school with the parents and friends
of the children. The minister and the trustees were dutifully present.
Of the mill people Dick and his mother appeared, Dick because his mother
insisted that a student should show interest in the school, his mother
because Dick refused to go a step without her. Barney came later, not
because of his interest in the school, but chiefly, he declared to
himself, conscious of the need of a reason, because there was nothing
much else to do. The presence of "Maine" Jabe might be taken as the high
water mark of the interest aroused throughout the section in the new
teacher and her methods.

The closing exercises were, with a single exception, a brilliantly
flawless exhibition. That exception appeared in the Euclid of the
entrance class. The mathematics were introduced early in the day. The
arithmetic, which dealt chiefly with problems of barter and sale of the
various products of the farm, was lightly and deftly passed over. The
algebra class was equally successful. In the Euclid class it seemed as
if the hitherto unbroken success would come to an unhappy end in the
bewilderment and confusion of Phoebe Ross, from whom the minister had
asked a demonstration of the pons asinorum. But the blame for poor
Phoebe's bewilderment clearly lay with the minister himself, for in
placing the figure upon the board with the letters designating the
isosceles triangle he made the fatal blunder of setting the letter B at
the right hand side of the base instead of at its proper place at the
left, as in the book. The result was that the unhappy Phoebe, ignoring
the figure upon the board and depending entirely upon her memory,
soon plunged both the minister and herself into confusion hopeless and
complete. But the quick eye of the teacher had detected the difficulty,
and, going to the board, she erased the unfamiliar figure, saying, as
she did so, in her gentle appealing voice, "Wait, Phoebe. You are quite
confused, I know. We shall wipe the board clean and begin all over." She
placed the figure upon the board with the designating letters arranged
as in the book. "Now, take your time," she said with deliberate
emphasis. "Let A, B, C be an isosceles triangle." And thus, with her
feet set firmly upon the familiar path, little Phoebe slipped through
that desperate maze of angles and triangles with an