e day fancied he saw a slight resemblance
in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became
evident before long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance.
Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was
alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from
school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion
of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge
of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's
excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of
the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away
and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing
in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous
perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.
Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of
course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing
beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around
her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are
not better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the
little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,
and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own
experience and judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained
his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see
that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but
one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition--the
faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though
not always an attribute of the noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both
fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had
arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that
he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined
to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he
thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps
wi