CHAPTER III.
Mrs.Martin was early at the schoolhouse the next morning, yet not so early but that she discovered that the new assistant had been there before her.

This was shown in some rearrangement of the school seats and benches.

They were placed so as to form a horseshoe before her desk, and at the further extremity of this semicircle was a chair evidently for himself.

She was a little nettled at his premature action, although admitting the utility of the change, but she was still more annoyed at his absence at such a moment.

It was nearly the school hour when he appeared, to her surprise, marshaling a file of some of the smaller children whom he had evidently picked up en route, and who were, to her greater surprise, apparently on the best of terms with him.