When the pail was set down and Amy was once more on her knees, “Dodd” began to look about to see what else he could do.  The girl took note of this, and soon set him to work.  She had him go through all the desks and clean out all the places where the books were kept.  When this was done she gave him something else to do, and to all her biddings he was most obedient.  He worked with a will, and carefully, doing just as he was told to do, and feeling that much of the success of the enterprise on foot depended on his own exertions.  It is such work as this that counts here below, and transforms the unfixed elements of human nature into character as enduring as the everlasting bills.  It is a little difficult to realize this fact, just at the time of its happening, but the after years show the truth of the statement.  The evolution that took place in “Dodd’s” soul that morning was a measurable quantity.

By noon the dirty, not to say nasty, school house was clean and in order, and after dinner Amy Kelly began to arrange her classes and prepare for school work.  During the forenoon she had learned the names of many of her pupils from their conversations with each other, and had put herself on such terms with them that the work of organizing her classes was easily accomplished, without annoyance to herself or the children.  By four o’clock she had her work laid out for the entire school, and the children went home happy, rejoicing in the newly found treasure of a school teacher in whom they delighted.

Amy knew little of many things that are well worth knowing in this world, but she did know how to manage children and how to teach school.  She was a girl of resources.  “Of such is the kingdom of heaven” among school teachers.

CHAPTER VIII.

It was no longer a task to keep “Dodd” in school.  He went every day, rain or shine, and was always eager to go.  Moreover, he studied well and learned rapidly.  The multiplication table, that had been the bane of his school life, up to date, and which, under the stupid management of Amos Waughops and the over-wrought Grube methods of Miss Stone, had floored him in every tussle he had had with it, now grew tractable and docile, a creature subservient to his will and quick to do his bidding, unhesitatingly.

And what wonder, when Amy taught him this early work in numbers by use of his memory rather than his reason; using a faculty that is strong at this period of life, rather than one which has hardly begun to sprout?

Did you ever think of that, dear devotee at the shrine of Grube, or Brother Harris, or all the rest of the train who insist that a child’s reason should “develop” largely before he has finished the first decade of his existence?