the rack on which she stretched every muscle of her mind. What did
she know about teaching? What kind of people would they be?

Late that mild September afternoon she began to find out The stage
stopped at the mouth of a lane; and looking out with deathly
faintness, Gabriella saw, standing beside a narrow, no-top buggy, a
big, hearty, sunburned farmer with his waist-coat half unbuttoned,
wearing a suit of butternut jeans and a yellow straw hat with the
wide brim turned up like a cow's horns.

"Have you got my school-teacher in there?" he called out in a voice
that carried like a heavy, sweet-sounding bell. "And did you bring
me them things I told you to get?"

"Which is she?" he asked as he came over to the stage window and
peered in at the several travellers.

"How do you do, Miss Gabriella?" he said, taking his hat clear off
his big, honest, hairy, brown head and putting in a hand that would
have held several of Gabriella's. "I'm glad to see you; and the
children have been crying for you. Now, if you will just let me
help you to a seat in the buggy, and hold the lines for a minute
while I get some things Joe's brought me, we'll jog along home. I'm
glad to see you. I been hearing a heap about you from the
superintendent."

Gabriella already loved him! When they were seated in the buggy, he
took up six-sevenths of the space. She was so close to him that it
scared her--so close that when he turned his head on his short,
thick neck to look at her, he could hardly see her.