"Yes. Anyhow, her cousin was elected yesterday to teach your school. It seems she wanted to teach in the country and Mollie's pop is friends with a lot of our directors and they voted her in." "I ain't goin' to school then!" Phœbe almost sobbed. "I don't like her, I don't want to go to her school; she laughed at me." "Come, come," the father laid his hands on her head and spoke gently yet in a tone that she respected. "You mustn't get worked up over it. She's a nice young lady, and it will be something new to have a teacher from Philadelphia. Anyhow, it's a long ways yet till school begins." "I'm glad it is." "Come," interrupted the aunt, "help now to dish up. It's time to eat once. We're Pennsylvania Dutch, so what's the use gettin' cross when we're called that?" "Yes," Phœbe's father said, smiling, "I'm a Dutchie too, but I'm a big Dutchie." Phœbe smiled, but all through the meal and during the days that followed she thought often of the rose. Her heart was bitter toward the new teacher and she resolved never, never to like her! CHAPTER IV THE NEW TEACHER THE first Monday in September was the opening day of the rural school on the hill. Phœbe woke that morning before daylight. At four she heard her Aunt Maria tramp about in heavy shoes. It was Monday and wash-day and to Maria Metz the two words were so closely linked that nothing less than serious illness or death could part them. "Ach, my," Phœbe sighed as she turned again under her red and green quilt, "this is the first day of school! Wish Aunt Maria'd forget to call me till it's too late to go." At five-thirty she heard her father go down-stairs and soon after that came her aunt's loud call, "Phœbe, it's time to get up. Get up now and get down for I have breakfast made." "Yes," came the dreary answer. "Now don't you go asleep again." "No, I'm awake. Shall I dress right aways for school?" "No. Put on your old brown gingham once." Phœbe made a wry face. "Ugh, that ugly brown gingham! What for did anybody ever buy brown when there are such pretty colors in the stores?" A moment later she pushed back the gay quilt and sat on the edge of the bed. The first gleams of day-break sent bright streaks of light into her room as she sat on the high walnut bed and swung her bare feet back and forth. "It's the first time I wasn't glad for school," she soliloquized softly. "I used to could hardly wait still, and I'd be glad this time if we didn't have that teacher from Phildelphy. Miss Virginia Lee her name is, and she's pretty like the name, but I don't like her! Guess she's that stuck up, comin' from the city, that she'll laugh all the time at us country people. I don't like people that poke fun at me, you bet I don't! I vonder now, mebbe I am funny to look at, that she laughed at me. But if I was I think somebody would 'a' told me long ago. I don't see what for she laughed so at me."