There was a difficult sentence in that day's lesson, a sentence over which David Hartman had puzzled and on which he failed. Then the teacher called on Alvin, simply as a matter of form. The school had begun to giggle a little when they heard his name. But now up he rose, the dull, the stupid, the ordinary, and read the sentence perfectly! At him David Hartman stared with scarlet face. He expected that the teacher would rise and annihilate Alvin, but the teacher passed to the next sentence. Mr. Carpenter was at the present time angry at David; he was rather glad he was discomfited. Such was the nature of Mr. Carpenter! To Alvin David said nothing, but upon the shoulder of Katy Gaumer, putting on her cloak in the cupboard after school, David laid a heavy hand. "You helped Alvin!" David's hand quivered with astonishment and anger and from the touch of Katy's shoulder. "It is cheating. Some day I am going to catch you at it before the whole school." Before she could answer, if she could have made answer at all, David was gone. She hated him; she would help Alvin all she liked until he had caught up, and afterwards, too, if she pleased. Alvin had had no chance, and David had everything, a rich father, fine clothes and money. It was perfectly fair for her to help Alvin. She hated all the Hartmans. She was furiously angry and it hurt to be angry. It did not occur to her to be ashamed of Alvin who would accept a girl's translation. With a whirl and a flirting of her skirts, Katy sailed through the door and down the pike. "You will sit in Millerstown!" she declared to the empty air. "But I am going away! Nothing ever happens in Millerstown. Millerstown is nothing worth!" Then Katy stood still, dizzy with all the glorious prospect of life. "I am going away! I am going away!" CHAPTER VII THE BEE CURE JANUARY and March and April passed, and still Mr. Carpenter and his pupils studied diligently. David Hartman did not carry out his threat to expose Katy; such a course would have been impossible. Day after day it seemed more certain that his father was about to say to him some extraordinary thing. He saw his father helping himself out of his buggy with a hand on the dashboard; he saw that hand tremble. But his father still said nothing. That May day when John Hartman would at last begin to right the wrong he had done had not yet arrived. In spite of all Katy's efforts she could not pass above David in school. Alvin Koehler needed less and less help, now that he was convinced that through learning lay the way to ease and comfort, to the luxurious possession of several suits of clothes, to a seat upon a platform. Mr. Carpenter would never have to do hard work; Alvin determined to model his life after that of his teacher. He scarcely spoke to his father now, and he grew more and more afraid of him.