much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives
than he's got."

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.

"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know," she
went on, hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,
but for the darling boy."

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her
lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees,
she went on, in a low voice:

"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I
ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of
sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing
a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And O, miss, he loves
you so much; and if you could hear him talk about you, in his pretty
way, and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse
him.

"It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should
take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I ain't
goin' to cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy--God
bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--to--take him