“Thank you,” responded the gentleman, a pair of keen, bright eyes sweeping Lizzie’s gloomy face.

He bowed, put his hat on his head and stepped out of the house.

There was a back door at the other side of the kitchen.  Not stopping for the ceremony of leave-taking, Tillie slipped out of it to hurry home before the stranger should reach the hotel.

Her heart beat fast as she hurried across fields by a short-cut, and there was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes.  Her ears were tingling with sounds to which they were unaccustomed, and which thrilled them exquisitely—­the speech, accent, and tones of one who belonged to that world unknown to her except through books—­ out of which Miss Margaret had come and to which this new teacher, she at once recognized, belonged.  Undoubtedly he was what was called, by magazine-writers and novel-writers, a “gentleman.”  And it was suddenly revealed to Tillie that in real life the phenomenon thus named was even more interesting than in literature.  The clean cut of the young man’s thin face, his pale forehead, the fineness of the white hand he had lifted to his hat, his modulated voice and speech, all these things had, in her few minutes’ observation of him, impressed themselves instantly and deeply upon the girl’s fresh imagination.

Out of breath from her hurried walk, she reached the back door of the hotel several minutes before the teacher’s arrival.  She had just time to report to her aunt that Sister Jennie’s mush was “all,” and to reply in the affirmative to the eager questions of Amanda and Rebecca as to whether she had seen the teacher, when the sound of the knocker on the front door arrested their further catechism.

“The stage didn’t leave out whoever it is—­it drove right apast,” said Aunty Em.  “You go, Tillie, and see oncet who is it.”

Tillie was sure that she had not been seen by the evicted applicant for board, as she had been hidden behind the stove.  This impression was confirmed when she now opened the door to him, for there was no recognition in his eyes as he lifted his hat.  It was the first time in Tillie’s life that a man had taken off his hat to her, and it almost palsied her tongue as she tried to ask him to come in.

In reply to his inquiry as to whether he could get board here, she led him into the darkened parlor at the right of a long hall.  Groping her way across the floor to the window she drew up the blind.

“Just sit down,” she said timidly.  “I’ll call Aunty Em.”

“Thank you,” he bowed with a little air of ceremony that for an instant held her spellbound.  She stood staring at him—­only recalled to herself and to a sense of shame for her rudeness by the sudden entrance of her aunt.

“How d’ do?” said Mrs. Wackernagel in her brisk, businesslike tone.  “D’you want supper?”

“I am the applicant for the New Canaan school.  I want to get board for the winter here, if I can—­and in case I’m elected.”