In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another direction.  She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk.  This was not strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines; but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the azaleas.  A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous laughter that threatened the discipline of the school.  All that Miss Mary could get from him was, that someone had been “looking in the winder.”  Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle with the intruder.  As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came plump upon the quondam drunkard—­now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in her present humor.  But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking—­in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored, silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber’s razor or Delilah’s shears.  So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination.  When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation.  And then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously very happy.

It was on a hot day—­and not long after this—­that two short-legged boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself.  At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden.  Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry.  “If you carried more of that for yourself,” she said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, “you’d do better.”  In the submissive silence that followed she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled.  Which caused the children to laugh again—­a laugh in which Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.  The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.