ng record of misdeeds behind them in other
grades--misdeeds that blackened the pages of other teachers' deportment
books--somehow managed to reach the door of Miss Georgiana's room
without being dismissed from the school by the principal. Once having
entered the favored portal, their characters seemed to change magically.

Mr. Marks knew that if he could bring the most abandoned scapegrace
along in his studies so that he could spend a year with Miss Georgiana
Shipman, in nine cases out of ten these hard-to-manage boys would be
saved to the school. Sometimes they graduated at the very top of their
classes.

Just as though Miss Georgiana were a fairy god-mother who struck her
crutch upon the platform and cried: "Se sesame! _change!_" the young
pirates often came through Miss Georgiana's hands and entered high
school with the reputation of being very decent fellows after all.

Nor was Miss Georgiana a "softie"; far from it. Ask the boys themselves
about it? Oh! they would merely hang their heads, and scrape a foot back
and forth on the rug, and grunt: "Aw! Miss Shipman understands a
fellow."

Her influence over the girls was even greater. She expected you to learn
your lessons, and if you were lazy she spent infinite pains in urging
you on. And if you did not work, Miss Georgiana felt aggrieved, and that
made any nice girl feel dreadfully mean! Besides, you took up more of
the teacher's time than you had any right to, and the other girls
declared it was not fair, and talked pretty harshly about you.

If Miss Georgiana had to remain after school for any reason, more than
half of her girls would be sure to hang around the school entrance until
she came out, and then they all trailed home with her.

When you saw a bevy of girls from twelve to fourteen years of age, or
thereabout, massed on one of the shady walks of the Parade soon after
school closed for the day, or chattering along Whipple Street on which
Miss Georgiana Shipman lived, you might be sure that the teacher of the
sixth grade, grammar, was in the center of the group.

Miss Georgiana lived with her mother--a little old lady in Quaker
dress--in a small cottage back from the street-line. There were three
big oaks in the front yard, and no grass ever could be coaxed to grow
under them, for the girls kept it worn down to the roots.

There were seats at the roots of the three huge trees in the open
season, and it was an odd afternoon indeed that did not find a