“Why under the Heavens didn’t you tell me?  How could I know?  No danger but the bowl is upset, and it’s all your fault.  She should be worth ten thousand, maybe twenty!”

“I never knew till jist before supper.  I got it frum a letter she wrote to her brother.  I’d no chanct to tell you.  Course I meant to, first chanct I had; but you go to work an upset everything before I get a chanct.  You never did amount to anything, an’ you never will.”

“Oh, well, now stop that.  I didn’t know.  I thought she was just common truck.  I’ll fix it up with her right after supper.  Now shut up.”

“You can’t do it!  It’s gone too far.  She’ll leave the house inside fifteen minutes,” said Mrs. Holt.

“Well, I’ll just show you,” he boasted.

George Holt pushed back his plate, wiped his mouth, brushed his teeth at the washing place on the back porch, and sauntered around the house to seat himself on the front porch steps.  Kate saw him there and remained in her room.  When he had waited an hour he arose and tapped on her door.  Kate opened it.

“Miss Bates,” he said.  “I have been doing penance an hour.  I am very sorry I was such a boor.  I was in earnest when I said I didn’t get the gad when I needed it.  I had a big disappointment to-day, and I came in sore and cross.  I am ashamed of myself, but you will never see me that way again.  I know I will make a failure of my profession if I don’t be more polite than Mother ever taught me to be.  Won’t you let me be your scholar, too?  Please do come over to the ravine where it is cool and give me my first lesson.  I need you dreadfully.”

Kate was desperately in need of human companionship in that instant, herself, someone who could speak, and sin, and suffer, and repent.  As she looked straight in the face of the man before her she saw, not him being rude and quarrelling pettily with his mother, but herself racing around the dining table pursued by her father raving like an insane man.  Who was she to judge or to refuse help when it was asked?  She went with him; and Mrs. Holt, listening and peering from the side of the window blind of her room across the hall, watched them cross the road and sit beside each other on the bank of the ravine in what seemed polite and amicable conversation.  So she heaved a deep sigh of relief and went to wash the dishes and plan breakfast.  “Better feed her up pretty well ’til she gits the habit of staying here and mebby the rest who take boarders will be full,” she said to herself.  “Time enough to go at skimpin’ when she’s settled, and busy, an’ I get the whip hand.”