“Can you learn ’em ’rithmetic good?” asked Nathaniel Puntz.  “I got a son his last teacher couldn’t learn ’rithmetic to.  He’s wonderful dumm in ’rithmetic, that there boy is.  Absalom by name.  After the grandfather.  His teacher tried every way to learn him to count and figger good.  He even took and spread toothpicks out yet —­but that didn’t learn him neither.  I just says, he ain’t appointed to learn ’rithmetic.  Then the teacher he tried him with such a Algebry.  But Absalom he’d get so mixed up!—­he couldn’t keep them x’s spotted.”

“I have a method,” Mr. Fairchilds began, “which I trust—­”

To Tillie’s distress, her aunt’s voice, at this instant calling her to “come stir the sots [yeast] in,” summoned her to the kitchen.

It was very hard to have to obey.  She longed so to stay till Fairchilds should come safely through his fiery ordeal.  For a moment she was tempted to ignore the summons, but her conscience, no less than her grateful affection for her aunt, made such behavior impossible.  Softly she stole out of the room and noiselessly closed the door behind her.

A half-hour later, when her aunt and cousins had gone to bed, and while the august School Board still occupied the parlor, Tillie sat sewing in the sitting-room, while the doctor, at the other side of the table, nodded over his newspaper.

Since Tillie had come to live at the hotel, she and the doctor were often together in the evening; the Doc was fond of a chat over his pipe with the child whom he so helped and befriended in her secret struggles to educate herself.  There was, of course, a strong bond of sympathy and friendship between them in their common conspiracy with Miss Margaret, whom the doctor had never ceased to hold in tender memory.

Just now Tillie’s ears were strained to catch the sounds of the adjourning of the Board.  When at last she heard their shuffling footsteps in the hall, her heart beat fast with suspense.  A moment more and the door leading from the parlor opened and Fairchilds came out into the sitting-room.

Tillie did not lift her eyes from her sewing, but the room seemed suddenly filled with his presence.

“Well!” the doctor roused himself to greet the young man; “were you ’lected?”

Breathlessly, Tillie waited to hear his answer.

“Oh, yes; I’ve escaped alive!” Fairchilds leaned against the table in an attitude of utter relaxation.  “They roasted me brown, though!  Galileo at Rome, and Martin Luther at Worms, had a dead easy time compared to what I’ve been through!”

“I guess!” the doctor laughed.  “Ain’t!”

“I’m going to bed,” the teacher announced in a tone of collapse.  “Good night!”

“Good night!” answered the doctor, cordially.

Fairchilds drew himself up from the table and took a step toward the stairway; this brought him to Tillie’s side of the table, and he paused a moment and looked down upon her as she sewed.