Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the “Per-rairie Rose.”  Being one of those who contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of “order,” which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as “Heaven’s first law.”  But she could not entirely govern the orbits of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own “Jeemes” sometimes collided with her.  Again her old nature asserted itself in her children.  Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard “between meals,” and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted walk down the ditches.  Octavia and Cassandra were “keerless” of their clothes.  So with but one exception, however much the “Prairie Rose” might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling.  That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen.  She was the realization of her mother’s immaculate conception—­neat, orderly, and dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that “Clytie” was a consolation and model for Mliss.  Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was “bad,” and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential moments.  It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss and others.  For “Clytie” was quite a young lady.  Inheriting her mother’s physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an early bloomer.  The youth of Smith’s Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and languished in May.  Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal.  A few were jealous of the master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master’s eyes to another.  He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when she did so.  I don’t remember whether I have stated that the master was a young man—­it’s of little consequence, however; he had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the