The teacher
lifted the child and held her close to his broad breast a moment.
"Be brave, little girl," said he, patting her head gently.
"Doctors don't always know. He may be better to-morrow."
He took the child to her seat, and sat beside her and whispered a
moment, his mouth close to her ear. And what he said, none knew,
save the girl herself, who ceased to cry in a moment but never
ceased to remember it.
A long time he sat, with his arm around her, questioning the
classes. He seemed to have taken his place between her and the
dark shadow.
Joe Beach had been making poor headway in arithmetic.
"I'll come over this evening, and we'll see what's the trouble.
It's all very easy," the teacher said.
He worked three hours with the young man that evening, and filled
him with high ambition after hauling him out of his difficulty.
But of all difficulties the teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn
was the greatest. She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a
little mischievous and very dear to him. "Pretty;" that is one
thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a
bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels. To Sidney
Trove the word "pretty" was inadequate.
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