Amy Kelly bad been awarded the contract to teach the “spring and summer school” in district four, Dundas township, on this particular year, and with timid, anxious steps she had walked six miles the first Monday morning of the term to take charge of her pupils.

It was her first school, and she was worried about it, as folks usually are about almost anything that is new to them and concerning which they are conscientious.  Some people never are worried, though.  They are born in a don’t-care fashion; they absorb the principle from the first, and it never wears out.  Others are anxious to begin with, but grow careless as they grow familiar with their surroundings.  Others are always anxious.  They never do so well that they do not hope to do better next time, and they would almost decline heaven if they felt it to be a place where they must forever remain as they are.

Amy Kelly was of the pattern last described.

As her name indicates, she was Irish.  Her father and mother came from “the old sod” before she was born, and they had won their way up from working at day’s wages to being the owners of a snug farm, which was well stocked and thriftily kept.  They spoke their native tongue to each other when in the secret recesses of their home, and talked with their children and the neighbors in a brogue so deeply accented that it would be useless for them ever to claim to be “Scotch-Irish,” had they wished to make such pretensions—­which they did not.

Indeed, these people would have been called “very Irish” by the average observer.  The old gentleman had red hair and only allowed his beard to grow about his neck, under his chin; wore a strap around his wrist, and smoked a short clay pipe.  His wife was stout and somewhat red-faced, and in summer a stray caller would be likely to find her at work in petticoat and short gown, her rather large feet and ankles innocent of shoes or stockings.  But she was a good housekeeper, for all of these things.  No better butter than hers ever came to market, and her heart was warm and true, even if it did beat under a rather full form and beneath a coarsely woven garment.  She had a cheery voice and a pleasant disposition, loved her husband devotedly, was proud of her family, both on account of its numbers and the health, brightness and good looks of her progeny; and her good deeds toward her neighbors, together with her general thrift and good nature, made her a great favorite in all the country-side.

Such was the family from which this young school miss was sprung.

The girl was just eighteen when she went to her new work.  She had received most of her education in a similar school, in a neighboring district, where she had always led her classes, but had spent two winters in a State Normal School.  She was a trim body, compactly built, had black hair and eyes, and a fresh, rosy complexion that is so characteristic of her class.  She could ride a fractious horse,