Sometimes Alvin stared at Katy and blinked like an owl in his effort to account for her alternate shyness and kindness. Alvin was not accustomed to being treated kindly.
"And what will you do when you are educated?" he inquired.
"What will I do?" repeated Katy, her heart thumping as it always did when Alvin spoke to her. "I will teach and I will earn a great deal of money and travel over the whole world and buy me souvenirs. And I will sing."
It was very pleasant to tell Alvin of her prospects. Perhaps he would walk home with her from church on Sunday. Then how Essie Hill, in spite of all her outward piety, would hate her! The secret of mild Essie's soul was not a secret from Katy.
"Will you teach in a school like Millerstown?" asked Alvin.
"Millerstown! Never! It would have to be a bigger school than Millerstown."
Alvin looked up at Mr. Carpenter. It was recess and Mr. Carpenter was hearing a spelling class which had not learned its lesson for the morning recitation. Mr. Carpenter did not appear at his best, judged by the usually accepted standards of etiquette; he leaned back lazily in his chair, his feet propped on his desk, his hands clasped above his head; but to Alvin there was nothing inelegant in his attitude. Mr. Carpenter was an enviable person; he never needed to soil his hands or to have a grimy face or to carry a dinner pail.
"Teaching would be nice work," said Alvin drearily. "But I can never learn this Latin. I am all the time getting farther behind. It gets every day worse and worse."
"Oh, but you can learn it!" cried Katy, her face aglow. If he would only, only, let her help! "I will show you. Here are my sentences for to-day. The doctor went over them and he says they are all right." And blushing, with her heart pounding more than ever, Katy returned to her seat.
There was a difficult sentence in that day's lesson, a sentence over which David Hartman had puzzled and on which he failed. Then the teacher called on Alvin, simply as a matter of form. The school had begun to giggle a little when they heard his name. But now up he rose, the dull, the stupid, the ordinary, and read the sentence perfectly! At him David Hartman stared with scarlet face. He expected that the teacher would rise and annihilate Alvin, but the teacher passed to the next sentence. Mr. Carpenter was at the present time angry at David; he was rather glad he was discomfited. Such was the nature of Mr. Carpenter!