The new teacher took her stand on the platform behind the desk, opened
her Bible, and read aloud the twenty-third Psalm. Her voice shook,
partly from fright, partly from trying so hard not to laugh. But she did
not even smile--far from it. Nate and Jimmy who were watching her could
have told you that. If she had been at a funeral she could hardly have
looked more solemn.

Jimmy touched Nate's foot under the bench; Nate gave Jimmy a shove; Bab
gazed hard at Lucy's flaxen cue; Lucy gazed straight at her thumb.

After the reading "Miss Dunlee" walked about with her blank-book in one
hand and her pen in the other to take down the children's names.

"I'm Joseph Rolfe; don't you remember me?" said the boy with red hair.
"And this boy next seat is Chicken Little."

"No, I ain't either, I'm Henry Small," corrected the little fellow,
ready to cry.

Kyzie shook her finger at both the boys and resolved that "Joe should
stop calling names, and Henry should stop being such a cry-baby."

Annie Farrell was a dear little girl in a blue and white gingham gown,
and the new teacher loved her at once. Dorothy Pratt was little more
than a baby, and when spoken to she put her apron to her eyes and wanted
to go home.

"She can't go home," said her older sister Janey, "mamma's cookin' for
company!"