This and one or two other instances in the beginning of his tour quite relieved the Doctor; for they showed that, at least, some of his neighbors had some money. So he rode on. He soon found, however, that he had gleaned the richest places first. On his way home he applied to others of his patients with far different results. Not only was the account he received very sorrowful; but the tale of poverty that several of them told was so moving that the Doctor, instead of receiving anything from them, distributed amongst them what he had already collected, saying they were poorer than himself. So when he reached home that evening he had no more than when he rode away. “Well, Bess,” he said, “it is the first time I ever dunned a debtor, and it is the last.” Mrs. Cary looked at him with the expression in her eyes with which a mother looks at a child. “I think it is just as well,” she said, smiling. “You must go and see old Mrs. Bellows,” he said. “She is in great trouble for fear they’ll sell her place.” Blair Cary, like her mother, watched with constant anxiety the change in her father. His hair was becoming white, and his face was growing more worn. At length, a plan which she had been forming for some time took definite shape. She announced her intention of applying for one of the common schools which had been opened in the neighborhood. When she first proposed the plan, it was received as if she were crazy—but her father and mother soon found that they no longer had a child to deal with, but a woman of sense and force of character. The reasons she gave were so clear and unanswerable that at length she overcame all objections and obtained the consent of all the members of the family except Mammy Krenda. The only point on which her father stood out for was that she should not apply for one of the schools under the new county-managers. A compromise was effected and she became the teacher of the school that had been built by the old residents. The Mammy still stood out. The idea of “her child” teaching a common school outraged the old woman’s sense of propriety, and threw her into a state of violent agitation. She finally yielded, but only on condition that she might accompany her mistress to the school every day. This she did, and when Miss Blair secured the little school at the fork in the road not far from their big gate, the old mammy was to be seen every day, sitting in a corner grim and a little supercilious, knitting busily, while her eyes ever and anon wandered over the classes before her, transfixing the individual who was receiving her mistress’s attention, with so sharp a glance that the luckless wight was often disconcerted thereby.