Tillie was in bed in a few minutes, rejoicing in the feeling of
the book under her pillow. Not yet dared she venture to light a
candle and read it--not until she should hear her father's heavy
snoring in the room across the hall.

The candles which she used for this surreptitious reading of
Sunday-school "li-bries" and any other chance literature which
fell in her way, were procured with money paid to her by Miss
Margaret for helping her to clean the school-room on Friday
afternoons after school. Tillie would have been happy to help her
for the mere joy of being with her, but Miss Margaret insisted
upon paying her ten cents for each such service.

The little girl was obliged to resort to a deep-laid plot in order
to do this work for the teacher. It had been her father's custom--
ever since, at the age of five, she had begun to go to school--to
"time" her in coming home at noon and afternoon, and whenever she
was not there on the minute, to mete out to her a dose of his
ever-present strap.

"I ain't havin' no playin' on the way home, still! When school is
done, you come right away home then, to help me or your mom, or I
'll learn you once!"

But it happened that Miss Margaret, in her reign at "William Perm"
school-house, had introduced the innovation of closing school on
Friday afternoons at half-past three instead of four, and Tillie,
with bribes of candy bought with part of her weekly wage of ten
cents, secured secrecy as to this innovation from her little