She awoke late the next morning, and after a hasty toilet, went down to breakfast, to find herself the center of observation.  The table was tolerably well-filled, with one or two blooming damsels, and for the rest, sun-browned country boys.

“Good morning,” said the gentleman of the house, heartily.  “Kalkilate you was pretty well played out, yesterday.  Don’t look as if you’d stand much hard work.  You’re a school teacher, I take it?  Yes, I thought so.  I can generally guess at a body’s business the first time trying.  I ain’t one of the educated sort myself, but I’ve picked up a few ideas knocking around the world.  I’ve got some girls now, I’d like to have learn something, but then they don’t seem to take to it.  I spose that kind o’ hankerin’ after books comes natural to some folks, and to others it don’t.  Me nor none of my family never seemed to set much store by that sort of thing.  It’s a good thing to be gifted, though.  There’s neighbor Green’s boy, Bill, he can ’late anything after he’s heerd it once, and when there’s any doins’ of any kind comin’ off, they send him so he can tell the rest, after he gets home, all what happened.  But, as I said before, it’s more’n any of the rest of us can do.

“And, to tell the truth, we don’t need to be as wise as Solomon, here in these parts, to be as good as the best.  When a man gets what you may call a little forehanded, he’s bound to have his say about matters and things, whether he understands them or not.  I rather guess, too, Miss,” he added, good-naturedly, “if you stay long enough round here, you’ll git to teachin’ one scholar.  There ain’t many old maids around here, but there’s any quantity of nice, industrious young men what want wives, and ain’t a goin’ far for to find them, eh, girls?”

There was a good deal of tittering at this last remark, and the aforementioned youths blushed to the tips of their ears.

“What singular people I have got among,” thought Clemence, who could not refrain from laughing at their oddity.  “What a strange fate has thrown me among them?”

She was destined to learn a good deal more of their singularities, during her prolonged sojourn at the little village.  A country school teacher, having to “board round,” has a good chance to study human nature.

Before she had been long at her new occupation, she found that she was expected to be, literally, “as wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a dove.”  There was no subject—­religion or politics not excepted—­which she was not expected thoroughly to understand and expound; she was evidently considered, from her position, as a sort of animated encyclopedia, to be consulted at will.  And all this, to be able to instruct a half-civilized brood of children, of both sexes, in the rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, with enough of grammar to enable them to stammer and stumble through a simple sentence, and arrive safely at the end without any material injury to the teacher’s nerves.