The stern patrician face looked coldly, cynically on at the men around him. The "vulgar herd," he called them. Just in the midst of his morbid reflections, he heard a merry, contagious laugh from Esther. He did not glance up. But, in an instant, she was at his side, telling with great glee the skit that had provoked the laughter. It was so irresistibly funny, Kenneth laughed with them, and the ice was broken. To be sure, he did not know Esther Bright as he did the alphabet, but what of that? Who could sound the deeps of such a rare woman's soul? She _was_ a rare woman. He conceded that every time he held an argument with himself, when she was the question of the argument. Always in her life, he was sure, there would be a reserve, through which no one could pass, unless it might be the ordained of God. She fascinated him more and more. One moment, in his adoration, he could have humbled himself to the dust to win one gracious word from her; at other times, his pride made him as silent and immovable as a sphinx. On this particular night at the club, Kenneth was in one of his moods. If Esther saw, she did not betray it. She came to him, telling in a straightforward way, that the work had grown so she could not do it all herself, and do justice to the men? Would he help her? There was a class in arithmetic. Would he kindly teach that for her to-night? Kenneth looked savage. "Oh, don't say no," she urged appealingly. "They are working in compound numbers and are doing so well. _Won't_ you take the class?" she urged, again. And Kenneth consented. It is but justice to say that the selection of the teacher proved wise. What this did for Kenneth himself is not the least part of the good resulting therefrom. Soon the click of pencils, and occasional questions and answers indicated that the arithmetic classes were at work. In one corner, the dignified and scholarly John Clayton sat helping a young miner learn to write. By her desk, sat Esther Bright, teaching Patrick Murphy to read. Learning to read when a man is forty-five is no easy task. Patrick Murphy did not find it so. He found it rather humiliating, but his unfailing good humor helped him out. The teacher began with script sentences, using objects to develop these. She wrote the sentences on the blackboard. Again and again the sentences were erased and then rewritten. But the pupil at last remembered. One sentence was, "I am a man." Patrick hesitated; then solemnly said, as though reading: "Oi certainly am not a woman, manin' no disrespict to women folk, Miss." She read quietly from the blackboard again, "I am a man." "Perhaps, Miss, it would be more intilligint fur me ter say, 'Oi am an Oirishman.'" "Very well," she said, smiling, "I will write the sentence that way." "You see, Miss," he continued, with droll seriousness, "it is ividint Oi am a man. Let me read the sintinces agin!" And he read them correctly.