The woman standing before the door watched for the three of them to come out of the forest in the evening. She listened for the laughter, the voices, the barking of the dog. The sense of perfect understanding among the three of them was to her a perpetual wonder. The child had only a few words, the dog had none. How could the man know so well, what they meant? It was a wonder that she turned about, and at last, out of the deeps of her own feelings, she got an answer that she held to. “If you love a thing enough, it's goin' to understand you.” The relation of the School-teacher to this tiniest child was also that of his relation to every other one. The sense of it spread throughout the school. This school became a family. What the cheerless home withheld, it gave. No child could have told one what that was. The teacher understood him, would have been the answer. The School-teacher required no built-up explanations, he required no justification of one's act by the unfamiliar standards of another, he required no trick, no artifice, no pretending, to get on with. To the question, “What is he like?” a little boy had answered, “Why, just like me.” For some time there had been a secret in the school. The School-teacher had talked with every child apart. The talk had been confidential. The School-teacher had spoken with each one, even the tiniest, as with an equal. He had spoken with him from day to day as the occasion arose. It was the way of this secret to make the child with whom he talked for a time unhappy. But as the School-teacher continued each day to strengthen him, to show him how much he depended on him, and to blow on the embers of his courage, he came at length to carry the secret with equanimity. On Thursday evening this secret became the common property of all. The School-teacher was going away! There would be no more school! On this afternoon the School-teacher had again talked with each child apart, told him that the time of which he had spoken had now come, and called upon him for the evidence of his courage. But, in spite of all, when the hour arrived, the school broke down. It left the little benches and gathered around the Schoolteacher. For a moment the Schoolteacher hesitated, before the group of wet faces, then, one by one, he took each child up in his arms, carried him to the window and told him something. Something which he had not told him before. No one, outside of the school, knew exactly what it was. But each child coming from the School-teacher's arms was strengthened, and set out for his home, the tears drying on his sturdy little face. An idea of what this something was, afterwards arose. A little boy had said, “Everybody's a-goin' to live at the School-teacher's house.” But he was in the extremity of illness when he said it, and they thought he spoke in delirium.