"Jacob, I wish you'd tell her once that she daren't have curls! She just plagues me all the time for 'em. Her hair was made to be kept back and not hangin' all over." "Why then," Phœbe asked soberly, "did God make my hair curly if I daren't have curls?" She spoke with a sense of knowing that she had propounded an unanswerable question. "That part don't matter," evaded Aunt Maria. "You ask your pop once how he wants you to have your hair fixed." The child looked up expectantly but she read the answer in her father's face. "I like your hair back in plaits, Phœbe. You look nice that way." "Ach," her nose wrinkled in disgust, "not so very, I guess. Mary Warner has curls, always she has curls!" "Come," said the father as he rose from his chair, "you be a good girl now to-day. I'm going now." "All right, pop. I'll tell you to-night how I like the teacher." After the breakfast dishes were washed and the other morning tasks accomplished Phœbe brought her comb and ribbons to her aunt and sat patiently on a spindle-legged kitchen chair while the woman carefully parted the long light hair and formed it into two braids, each tied at the end with a narrow brown ribbon. "Now," Aunt Maria said as she unbuttoned the despised brown dress, "you dare put on your blue chambray dress if you take care and not get it dirty right aways." "Oh, I'm glad for that. I like that dress best of all I have. It's not so long in the body or tight or long in the skirt like my other dresses. And blue is a prettier color than brown. I'll hurry now and get dressed." She ran up the wide stairs, her hands skimming lightly the white hand-rail, and entered the little room known as the clothes-room, where the best clothes of the family were hung on heavy hooks fastened along the entire length of the four walls. She soon found the blue chambray dress. It was extremely simple. The plain gathered skirt was fastened to the full waist by a wide belt of the chambray. But the dress bore one distinctive feature. Instead of the usual narrow band around the neck it was adorned with a wide round collar which lay over the shoulders. Phœbe knew that the collar was vastly becoming and the knowledge always had a soothing effect upon her. When the call of the school bell floated down the hill to the gray farmhouse Phœbe picked up her school bag and her tin lunch kettle and started off, outwardly in happier mood yet loath to go to the old schoolhouse for the first session of school. From the Metz farm the road to the school began to ascend. Gradually it curved up-hill, then suddenly stretched out in a long, steep climb until, upon the summit of the hill, it curved sharply to the west to a wide clearing. It was to this clearing the little country schoolhouse with its wide porch and snug bell-tower called the children back to their studies.