You look the most like a real man I ever saw you," she conceded.
"And Kate Bates won't need glasses for forty years yet," he said as he went back to his work in the ravine.
Kate was in the middle of the creek helping plant a big stone.

He stood a second watching her as she told the boys surrounding her how best to help her, then he turned away, a dull red burning his cheek.
"I'll have her if I die for it," he muttered, "but I hope to Heaven she doesn't think I am going to work like this for her every day of my life." As the villagers sauntered past and watched the work of the new teacher, many of them thought of things at home they could do that would improve their premises greatly, and a few went home and began work of like nature.

That made their neighbours' places look so unkempt that they were forced to trim, and rake, and mend in turn, so by the time the school began, the whole village was busy in a crusade that extended to streets and alleys, while the new teacher was the most popular person who had ever been there.

Without having heard of such a thing, Kate had started Civic Improvement.
George Holt leaned against a tree trunk and looked down at her as he rested.
"Do you suppose there is such a thing as ever making anything out of this ?" he asked.
"A perfectly lovely public park for the village, yes; money, selling it for anything, no! It's too narrow a strip, cut too deeply with the water, the banks too steep.

Commercially, I can't see that it is worth ten cents." "Cheering! It is the only thing on earth that truly and wholly belongs to me.