Miss Willis lived at home with her mother. They owned their small house. The other expenses were defrayed from the daughter’s salary; hence strict economy was obligatory, and the expenditure of every five-dollar bill was a matter of moment. Miss Willis’s father had died when she was a baby. The meagre sum of money which he left had sufficed to keep his widow and only child from want until Marion’s majority. All had been spent except the house; but, as Miss Willis now proudly reflected, she had become a breadwinner, and her mother’s declining years were shielded from poverty. They would be able to manage famously until Sir Galahad arrived, and when he came one of the joys of her surrender would be that her mother’s old age would be brightened by a few luxuries. Glendale, as its name denotes, had been a rustic village. When Miss Willis was engaged (to teach school, not to be married) it was a thriving, bustling, overgrown, manufacturing town already yearning to become a city. By the end of another five years Glendale had realized its ambition, and Miss Willis was still a teacher in its crowded grammar-school. How the years creep, yet how they fly, when one is busy with regular, routine employment! The days are such a repetition of each other that they sometimes seem very long, but when one pauses and looks back one starts at the accumulation of departed time, and deplores the swiftness of the seasons. Five years had but slightly dimmed the freshness of Miss Willis’s charms. She was as comely as ever. She was a trifle stouter, a trifle less girlish in manner, and only a trifle--what shall we call it?--wilted in appearance. The close atmosphere of a school-room is not conducive to rosiness of complexion; and the constant strain of guiding over forty immature minds in the paths of knowledge will weigh upon the flesh, though the soul be patient and the heart light. Miss Willis’s class comprised the children whose average age was twelve to thirteen--those who had been in the school three years. There were both boys and girls, and they remained with her a year. She had begun with the youngest children, but promotion had presently established her in this position.