As years ago we carried to your knees
The tales and treasures of eventful days,
Knowing no deed too humble for your praise,
Nor any gift too trivial to please,
So still we bring, with older smiles and tears,
What gifts we may, to claim the old, dear right;
Your faith, beyond the silence and the night,
Your love still close and watching through the years.
| CHAPTER I | CHAPTER II | CHAPTER III | CHAPTER IV |
| CHAPTER V | CHAPTER VI | CHAPTER VII |
"Well, we couldn't have much worse weather than this for the lastweek of school, could we?" Margaret Paget said in discouragement.She stood at one of the school windows, her hands thrust deep inher coat pockets for warmth, her eyes following the whirling courseof the storm that howled outside. The day had commenced with snow,but now, at twelve o'clock, the rain was falling in sheets, and thebarren schoolhouse yard, and the play-shed roof, ran muddy streamsof water.
Margaret had taught in this schoolroom for nearly four years now,ever since her seventeenth birthday, and she knew every feature ofthe big bare room by heart, and every detail of the length of villagestreet that the high, uncurtained windows commanded. She had stoodat this window in all weathers: when locust and lilac made even uglylittle Weston enchanting, and all the windows were open to floods ofsweet spring air; when tie dry heat of autumn burned over the world;when the common little houses and barns, and the bare trees, laydazzling and transfigured under the first snowfall, and the woodcrackled in the schoolroom stove; and when, as to-day, midwinterrains swept drearily past the windows, and the children must havethe lights lighted for their writing lesson. She was tired of it all,with an utter and hopeless weariness. Tired of the bells, and thewhispering, and the shuffling feet, of the books that smelled ofpencil-dust and ink and little dusty fingers; tired of theblackboards, cleaned in great irregular scallops by small and zealousarms; of the clear-ticking big clock; of little girls who s