“She’s kept you settin’ up ever since, Osh!” chuckled Bill Harmon.

“She has so!” agreed Osh cheerfully, “but you ain’t hardly the one to twit me of it; bein’ as how you’ve never took a long breath yourself sence you was married!  But you don’t ketch me complainin’!  It’s a poor rule that won’t work both ways!  Maria hurried me into poppin’ the question, and hurried me into marryin’ her, an’ she ain’t let up on me a minute sence then; but she’ll railroad me into heaven the same way, you see if she don’t.  She’ll arrive ‘head o’ time as usual and stan’ right there at the bars till she gits Dig ‘n’ Lallie Joy ‘n’ me under cover!”

“She’s a good woman, an’ so’s my wife,” remarked Bill sententiously; “an’ Colonel Wheeler says good women are so rigged inside that they can’t be agreeable all the time.  The couple of ’em are workin’ their fingers to the bone for the school teacher to-day; fixin’ him up for all the world as if he was a bride.  He’s got the women folks o’ this village kind o’ mesmerized, Thurston has.”

“He’s a first-rate teacher; nobody that ain’t hed experience in the school room is fitted to jedge jest how good a teacher Ralph Thurston is, but I have, an’ I know what I ‘m talkin’ about.”

“I never heard nothin’ about your teachin’ school, Osh.”

“There’s a good deal about me you never heard; specially about the time afore I come to Beulah, ’cause you ain’t a good hearer, Bill!  I taught the most notorious school in Digby once, and taught it to a finish; I named my boy Digby after that school!  You see my father an’ mother was determined to give me an education, an’ I wa’n’t intended for it.  I was a great big, strong, clumsy lunkhead, an’ the only thing I could do, even in a one-horse college, was to play base ball, so they kep’ me along jest for that.  I never got further than the second class, an’ I wouldn’t ‘a’ got there if the Faculty hadn’t ‘a’ promoted me jest for the looks o’ the thing.  Well Prof.  Millard was off in the country lecturin’ somewheres near Bangor an’ he met a school superintendent who told him they was awful hard up for a teacher in Digby.  He said they’d hed three in three weeks an’ had lost two stoves besides; for the boys had fired out the teachers and broke up the stoves an’ pitched ’em out the door after ’em.  When Prof.  Millard heard the story he says, ’I’ve got a young man that could teach that school; a feller named Ossian Popham.’  The superintendent hed an interview with me, an’ I says:  ’I’ll agree to teach out your nine weeks o’ school for a hundred dollars, an’ if I leave afore the last day I won’t claim a cent!’ ’That’s the right sperit,’ says the Supe, an’ we struck a bargain then an’ there.  I was glad it was Saturday, so ’t I could start right off while my blood was up.  I got to Digby on Sunday an’ found a good boardin’ place.  The trustees didn’t examine me, an’ ’t was lucky for me they didn’t.  The last three teachers hed been splendid scholars, but that didn’t save the stoves any, so they just looked at my six feet o’ height, an’ the muscle in my arms, an’ said they’d drop in sometime durin’ the month.  ’Look in any time you like after the first day,’ I says.  ’I shall be turrible busy the first day!’