No one was more glad of the change than Patty Lyman. The new master came to town before her tender palm was quite healed from the cruel blows; and she was the first to see him. But the meeting happened in such a queer way, that I shall have to tell you about it. CHAPTER XII. THE LITTLE DIPPER. "Well, mother," said Squire Lyman, one afternoon, "the new teacher has got along, and by the looks of him I don't believe he is the man to abuse our little girl. Patty, dear, open the cellar door for papa." Mr. Lyman's arms were full of hemlock, which he had brought home from the woods. Betsy liked it for brooms, and he and his hired men always got quantities of it when they were hauling the winter's wood from the wood lot. "Yes, I know the Starbird family very well," replied Mrs. Lyman; "that is, I used to know this young man's mother, and I presume he is quite different from Mr. Purple." Mrs. Lyman was sitting before the kitchen fire with the great family Bible in her lap; but, instead of reading it, she was winding round it some white soft wicking. "Why, mamma, mamma, what are you doing?" exclaimed Patty. "How can papa read to-night with the Bible all tied up?" "I shan't hurt the good book, my dear." And as Mrs. Lyman spoke she cut the wicking in two with the shears, and as it fell apart it let out the precious volume just as good as ever. Then she took from the table some slender sticks, and put on each stick twelve pieces of wicking, giving each piece a little twist with her fingers. "O, now I know," said Moses, who was watching too; "you're a goin' to make candles--going to dip those strings in a kettle of something hot. Yes, I know." "Yes, and there's the kettle," said Patty. Mrs. Lyman was very late this year about her candles. She dipped them once a year, and always in the afternoon and evening, because there was so much, so very much going on in that kitchen in the morning. "Now, please, mamma," said Patty, "let me help." Mrs. Lyman tipped two chairs face downward towards the floor,--"Like folks trying to creep," said Patty,--and laid two long sticks from one chair to the other, making a very good fence. Next she set the candle rods across the fence, more than a hundred of them in straight rows. "James," called she, going to the door; and while James was coming she laid a large plank on the floor right under the candle rods. "That's to catch the drippings," said the learned Moses; and he was right. Squire Lyman and James came in and lifted the heavy brass kettle from the crane, and placed it on a board just in front of the brick hearth, not far from the creeping chairs; and then Mrs. Lyman sat down to dip candles. In the first place, when she put the pieces of wicking into the kettle of hot tallow and took them out again, they looked like greasy strings, and nothing else. One after another she dipped them in and drew them out, dipped them in and drew them out, and set them carefully back in their places across the fence.