It happened that Ezra was receiving a visit from a committee of Janeville school directors, and he had departed from his every-day mechanical style of teaching in favor of some fancy methods which he had imbibed at the Normal School during his attendance at the spring term, and which he reserved for use on occasions like the present.  Tillie watched him with profound attention, but hardly with profound respect.

“Childern,” Ezra said, with a look of deep thought, as he impressively paced up and down before the class of small boys and girls ranged on the platform, “now, childern, what’s this reading lesson about?”

“’Bout a apple-tree!” answered several eager little voices.

“Yes,” said Ezra.  “About an apple-tree.  Correct.  Now, childern—­ er—­what grows on apple-trees, heh?”

“Apples!” answered the intelligent class.

“Correct.  Apples.  And—­now—­what was it that came to the apple-tree?”

“A little bird.”

“Yes.  A bird came to the apple tree.  Well—­er,” he floundered for a moment, then, by a sudden inspiration, “what can a bird do?”

“Fly! and sing!”

“A bird can fly and sing,” Ezra nodded.  “Very good.  Now, Sadie, you dare begin.  I ’ll leave each one read a werse.”

The next recitation was a Fourth Reader lesson consisting of a speech of Daniel Webster’s, the import of which not one of the children, if indeed the teacher himself, had the faintest suspicion.  And so the class was permitted to proceed, without interruption, in its labored conning of the massive eloquence of that great statesman; and the directors presently took their departure in the firm conviction that in Ezra Herr they had made a good investment of the forty-five dollars a month appropriated to their town out of the State treasury, and they agreed, on their way back to Janeville, that New Canaan was to be pitied for having to put up with anything so unheard-of as “a Harvard gradyate or whatever,” after having had the advantages of an educator like Ezra Herr.

And Tillie, as she walked home with her four brothers and sisters, hoped, for the sake of her own advancement, that a Harvard graduate was at least not less intelligent than a Millersville Normal.

XIV

THE HARVARD GRADUATE

That a man holding a Harvard degree should consider so humble an educational post as that of New Canaan needs a word of explanation.

Walter Fairchilds was the protege of his uncle, the High Church bishop of a New England State, who had practically, though not legally, adopted him, upon the death of his father, when the boy was fourteen years old, his mother having died at his birth.

It was tacitly understood by Walter that his uncle was educating him for the priesthood.  His life, from the time the bishop took charge of him until he was ready for college, was spent in Church boarding-schools.