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 The first week in September—for schools began earlier in Mary William's day than in ours—Mrs. Beardsley's "treasure" arrived upon the scene, and took all hearts by storm. It would be difficult to say whether the exhilaration of her spirits made the new teacher charming, or whether her almost instant popularity was the secret of that same exhilaration. Such things go hand in hand. Certain it is that Mary William lived in a round of pleasures far more stimulating, and far more satisfying too, than the pleasures usually thus designated. She loved her work so thoroughly that its very difficulties but lent it zest. She liked the girls, and she regarded Mrs. Beardsley with the enthusiastic devotion felt by a subaltern for his superior officer.

And so the first school term went by only too swiftly, and the long Christmas vacation came as an unwelcome interruption. How much more unwelcome would it have been had Mary William known what it held in store for her! Nothing could have been more unlooked for, nothing could have been to Mary more unwished for, than the events which followed upon the arrival from his Western ranch of the minister's son, Fred Ingraham. When Mary returned home for the holidays, he had been in Dunbridge scarcely a week, and had not yet ceased to be the sensation of the hour.

Fred Ingraham came into her life with all the freshness and insistency of a prairie breeze, which