monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook
its dark-blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and
green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.
The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General superstition
had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that,
at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for
a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and "screaming farces"; that,
alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a
grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These
announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk,
and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the
master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of
thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous
evening the master and Mliss "assisted."

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt
something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her
excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of
her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted
to give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and
arched her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities
of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly
affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief,
as was the tender-hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller"