ly boys, especially Tom Walker, but I am so
big and strong that I conquered him by brute force, and had no trouble
after one battle. You will conquer some other way. Tom is very
susceptible to good looks,--calls me a hayseed, and a chestnut, and a
muff. It will be different with you," and Ruby pressed the hand she was
holding. Then she spoke of Col. Crompton, who used to examine the
teachers, and before whom she had been five times; usually answering the
same questions, especially those contained in the "Formula," and to
which Eloise would not be subjected.

"What is the Formula?" Eloise asked, and Ruby told her, while Eloise
listened bewildered, and glad that she was to escape an ordeal she could
never pass with credit.

It was easy to be confiding with Ruby, and Eloise soon found herself
talking freely of her life and school days in Mayville, and the
necessity there was for her to teach, and the bitter disappointment it
would be to lose the school on which so much depended.

"My father is dead," she said, "and my mother is--" she hesitated, while
a deep flush came to her cheeks, "she is an invalid, and there is no one
to care for her now but me. She is in California, and I may have to go
for her, and must have the money."

Just for a moment, when Mr. Bills asked her to take Eloise's place,
there had been in Ruby's mind a half-formed hope that she might be
wholly reinstated in her old place as a teacher. But it was gone now,
and Jack Harcourt himself was not more kindly disposed to the helpless
girl than she was.

"You shall not lose the school, nor the time either," she said
impulsively. "I am to take it till you are able, and then I shall step
out. In the mean time, I shall do all I can for you,--shall enlist Tom
Walker on your side, and you will have no trouble."

She arose to go, then sat down again and said, "I hope you will be able
to attend our Rummage Sale."

"Rummage Sale!" Eloise repeated, remembering to have heard the word in
connection with the slippers Miss Amy had sent her. "I don't think I
quite understand."

"Don't you know what a Rummage Sale is?" Ruby Ann asked, explaining what
it was, and saying they were to have one in a vacant house not far from
Mrs. Biggs's, the proceeds to go for a free library for District No. 5.
"I am one of the solicitors," she continued, "but as you are a stranger
you may not have anything to contribute."

As Rummage Sales were just beginning to dawn on the public