Miss Myrover began her work as a teacher in the autumn, at the opening of the school year.  It was a novel experience at first.  Though there had always been negro servants in the house, and though on the streets colored people were more numerous than those of her own race, and though she was so familiar with their dialect that she might almost be said to speak it, barring certain characteristic grammatical inaccuracies, she had never been brought in personal contact with so many of them at once as when she confronted the fifty or sixty faces—­of colors ranging from a white almost as clear as her own to the darkest livery of the sun—­which were gathered in the schoolroom on the morning when she began her duties.  Some of the inherited prejudice of her caste, too, made itself felt, though she tried to repress any outward sign of it; and she could perceive that the children were not altogether responsive; they, likewise, were not entirely free from antagonism.  The work was unfamiliar to her.  She was not physically very strong, and at the close of the first day went home with a splitting headache.  If she could have resigned then and there without causing comment or annoyance to others, she would have felt it a privilege to do so.  But a night’s rest banished her headache and improved her spirits, and the next morning she went to her work with renewed vigor, fortified by the experience of the first day.

Miss Myrover’s second day was more satisfactory.  She had some natural talent for organization, though hitherto unaware of it, and in the course of the day she got her classes formed and lessons under way.  In a week or two she began to classify her pupils in her own mind, as bright or stupid, mischievous or well behaved, lazy or industrious, as the case might be, and to regulate her discipline accordingly.  That she had come of a long line of ancestors who had exercised authority and mastership was perhaps not without its effect upon her character, and enabled her more readily to maintain good order in the school.  When she was fairly broken in, she found the work rather to her liking, and derived much pleasure from such success as she achieved as a teacher.

It was natural that she should be more attracted to some of her pupils than to others.  Perhaps her favorite—­or, rather, the one she liked best, for she was too fair and just for conscious favoritism—­was Sophy Tucker.  Just the ground for the teacher’s liking for Sophy might not at first be apparent.  The girl was far from the whitest of Miss Myrover’s pupils; in fact, she was one of the darker ones.  She was not the brightest in intellect, though she always tried to learn her lessons.  She was not the best dressed, for her mother was a poor widow, who went out washing and scrubbing for a living.  Perhaps the real tie between them was Sophy’s intense devotion to the teacher.  It had manifested itself almost from the first day of the school, in the rapt look of admiration Miss Myrover always saw