thought that the whispered conference boded them ill; that the new
teacher and the old teacher were hatching some conspiracy against them.
It must have looked like it. Perry's elbows were on the table, and my
elbows were on the table. My chin rested in my hands, but his hands
were waving beneath my chin as he unfolded to me the plot he had just
discovered against his hopes and his happiness. But the school was
good. The second grammar class had been relieved from a recitation by
this confab, and somehow Perry had a subduing influence. Even the
Biggest Boy opened his desk quietly and never once looked up from his
geography except for a cautious glance out of the corner of his left
eye.

"There was a pile of 'em that high, Mark," said Perry, waving his hands
about a foot above the table. "There was some books of po-ems and
novels and such. He'd sent them all to her in one batch--all new, mind
ye, too--and it pleased her most to death. Well, it made me feel flat,
I tell you--so flat that when she asked me if I didn't think it was
lovely of him, I burst right out and said it was really. What I should
'a' done was kind of pass it off as if it didn't amount to much."

"Who is the young woman?" I asked.

"I ain't mentionin' names," Perry replied, "and I ain't givin' the name
of the other man; but I have an idee you could guess if you kep' at it."

Our valley does not bloom with beautiful young women. We always have a
few, but those few can be counted on one's fingers. Our valley does
not number among its men many who can supplement their sentimental
attentions with gifts of books. I knew of one. So it did not require
much guessing on my part to divine the cause of Perry's heart-sickness;