Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/183

 fallen tree trunks, or small wood-piles, or cocks of hay. They called their teacher what they pleased: sometimes Simon, sometimes Teacher, sometimes Mister! Bella Jones always said "Perfessor." They studied from whatever book they liked best, each child bringing the "Reader" or "Speller" he could most easily lay hands on. But they learned more from Simon's books than from their own. That book of William Shakespeare's stood easily first in their estimation, for when the "perfessor" read from it, they somehow understood the story, in spite of the hard words which, taken by themselves, seemed to mean nothing at all.

If a ground squirrel scuttled across the clearing, no one was so quick to observe him as the teacher himself, and before Fritz Meyer could seize a stone to fire at the tame little chap, the young sportsman had become so interested in something Simon was saying about its ways and nature, that he forgot what he wanted of the stone.

"How do you spell squirrel?" asked a sharp-featured boy one day, as he watched the twinkling eyes of one of the tiny creatures.

Simon drew his brows together over his mild eyes, with a mighty effort at thinking.