That was the beginning of a new world to Hannah.  She took her young instructor’s breath away by the avidity with which she devoured the lessons he set her.  By the rapt air of exultation with which Hannah recited them, stepping back and forth by her wheel, you would have thought that “c-a-t, cat; r-a-t, rat,” was the finest poetry ever written.  And in no time at all it was no longer “c-a-t, cat,” but “parallel,” and “phthisis,” and such orthographical atrocities, on which the eager scholar was feeding; for, Hannah’s mind was as fresh as her round, rosy face, and as vigorous as her stout little body.

Captain Winthrop had several reasons for being interested in Hannah; and when he found her so quick at her spelling, he said he was willing to occupy some of his enforced leisure in giving her instruction in other branches.  Hannah fell to at this feast of knowledge like a young bear in a bee-tree.

But there were some difficulties.  Like the spelling, arithmetic was all very well, since she could do that in her head while she spun; but reading and writing were different.  She would not stop her work for them, and so Captain Winthrop fell into the habit of going over to Master Necronsett’s house in the afternoon with his books, and being there, all ready for a lesson, when Hannah came hurrying back after she had finished her day’s “stint.”  As long as there was light to see, she pored over her writing and reading, while the young officer sat by, ready to help, and talking in a low tone to Ann Mary.

After a time there grew up a regular routine for Captain Winthrop.  In the mornings he went out to the granary and read aloud to Hannah from a book called “The Universal Preceptor; being a General Grammar of Art, Science, and Useful Knowledge.”  Out of this he taught her about “mechanical powers” and “animated nature” and astronomy and history and geography—­almost anything that came to his hand.

Up in our garret we have the very book he used, and modern research and science have proved that there is scarcely a true word in it.  But don’t waste any pity on Hannah for having such a mistaken teacher, for it is likely enough, don’t you think, that research and science a hundred years from now will have proved that there is scarcely a word of truth in our school-books of to-day?  It really doesn’t seem to matter much.

At any rate, those were the things of which Captain Winthrop talked to Hannah in the mornings.  In the afternoon, he went over to an apple-tree by the edge of the witch garden, and there he found Ann Mary; and what he talked to her about nobody knew but herself, although Master Necronsett passed back and forth so often in his herb-gathering that it is likely he may have caught something.  It seems not improbable, from what happened afterward, that the young man was telling the young girl things which did not come out of a book, and which are consequently safe from science and research, for they are certainly as true to-day as they were then.