Mary--I fear to the danger of school discipline--was lately in the habit
of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland
memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a
gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more
distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door.
On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose
dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;
but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled
her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.
It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a
moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the
dust beside the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long
bench. Her voice was husky as she began:

"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my
Tommy."

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
attention she could give him.

"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war paint,"
and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
schoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,
there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't