"I remember," I said, trying to smother what annoyance I still felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante in me. "The hulled corn? Oh! yes, indeed!" he answered with a sprightly air. "We have it served in the same way at Emily's, and we think it's just--a--rich, you know. But I wanted to tell you. If you could have known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming, so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in the _Three Fates_', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go up to scoff, but I remained to pray." My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased. "Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste. "Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the literal glasses!" "Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean that--just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face--"if I had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see anything out of 'em or not!" "You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was a different person now, in a different sphere of action. Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the Wallencamp school--a doubtful position to his mind. He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to cheek. Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat baffling to the stern designs of justice.