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"THE CRISIS" 12

So as it happened all she could do was to underline the new words and get their meaning from the vocabulary and trust to the gods that there would be no blind alleys in construction.
Anyone but anna would have foreseen the end of that fairy-tale. For the prince, with the utter disregard for rank and wealth and training which so much fails to distinguish real princes, sought out the little shepherdess, who had been living most happily and unsuspectingly with her little sheep and her "so pleasant souvenirs" (so said Miss Selena Morton in translation), and besought her to marry him and live forever in his kingdom by the sea. 
"'Oh, sky!' (thus ran Miss Morton's rendition for the French of 'Oh, heavens!'). 
'Oh, sky!' exclaimed the shepherdess, and she told him he would accompany him all willingly, and when the price had kissed her on both jaws they went on their way. 
And if you can find a happier ending of this history is is necessary that you go and tell it to the Pope at Rome." Thus, and not otherwise, did Miss Selena Morton mutilate that exquisite story! 
But Miss Fetter was too amazed to care. Moreover, Tommy Reynolds and some of the other pupils had translated very well. Perhaps the work in grammar had been the best thing, after all-and perhaps she, too, was becoming a better teacher, she hoped to herself wistfully. 
"I'm very much pleased with the work you've done to-day," she told the class. "It appears to me you've improved greatly-particularly Master Reynolds."
And Master Reynolds, who was cleaning the black-boards, smiled inscrutably. 
All the way home Anna pondered on something new and sweet in her heart. 
"But just think-the first of the story had come true, why shouldn't the second? Oh, I wish, I wish-" She rushed into the "front-room," where Theo-philus sat, his small broken head bandaged up, picking indefatigably at his banjo, and hugged him tumultuously.
He took her caress unmoved, having long ago decided that all women outside of aunts and mothers were crazy. "Look out, you'll break my new strings," he warned her. And she actually begged his pardon and proffered him fifteen cents towards the still visionary ukulele. 

One can't go too far on the similarity be-tween one incident in one's life and the promise of a French fairy-tale. "Still things do happen," she told herself, surprised at her own tenacity. "Think of how Mr. Allen came into Mrs. Walton's that night and changed my whole life." She went to bed in a maze of rapture and anticipation. 
Her mother was interested in a bazaar and dinner for the bazaar workers in the Methodist Church, but she had quarrelled with one of the sisters and she meant to go and arrange her booth and come back, so she shouldn't have to eat at the same table with that benighted Mrs. Vessels. 
"I'd rather eat stalled oxen by myself all my days," she told her daughter Saturday morning, "than share the finest victuals at the same table as Pauline Vessels." 
"Oh, Mother," Anna had wailed, "how can you say such things? 'Stalled oxen' is the choice thing, the thing you are supposed to eat. You've got it up-side down." 
"Well, what difference does it make?" her mother had retorted, vexed for once. "I'm sure I wouldn't like the stuff, any-way. They'd probably be tough. Don't you let Philly stir out of this house till I come back, Anna. I don't want him to hurt hisself again. Do you think you can manage everything? I swept all the rooms yesterday but the kitchen. There's only that to scrub and dusting to do." 
Anna nodded. She was glad to be alone, glad to have work to do. She sent Theo-philus out to clean up the side yard. She could hear him aimlessly pattering about. 
"Ann," he called. She had finished the scrubbing and all the dusting, too, except in the "front-room," which her mother would keep full of useless odds and ends-sheaves of wheat, silly bric-a-brac on what-nots. Ordinarily she hated it, but to-day-"to be alive"- her mind, not usually given to poetical flights, halted-"to be alive," no, "to be young," that was it, "to be young was very heaven." And he had said it in the queerest way, "you didn't say she met a prince." If she could just find out something about him,who he was, where he lived, who was his mother's youngest sister. Why, what had she been thinking about to let two months go by without making any inquiry? True, she 

"THERE WAS ONE TIME" 13

didn't know many colored people in Mary-town, she had never bothered-she had been so concerned with her own affairs-but her mother knew everybody, positively, and a question of here or there! Oh, if he only knew how the story ended! She became poetical again-"Would but some winged angel ere too late." She had to smile at herself. Yet the winged angel was on the way in the person of Theophilus. He couldn't have adopted a more effective disguise. 
"Ann," he called again. "C'n I go fishin' now with Tommy Reynolds? I've found all these nice worms in the garden, they'll make grand bait. Aunt (he pronounced it like the name of the humble insect) won't mind. She'd let me go 'n the air 'll be good for my head," he wheedled. 
Anna, dusting the big Bible, hardly turned around. "No," she told him vigor-ously, "you can't go, Philly. You must stay till mother comes-she'll be here pretty soon, and you wash your hands and study your lessons a bit. Your last report was dreadful. Tommy Reynolds is only one year older than you and there he is in the second year of seminary and you still in the graded schools. He plays, but he get's his lessons, too."
And then Theo began to rustle his wings, but neither he nor his cousin heard them. 
"Oh, pshaw!" he retorted in disgust. 
"Tommy don't get no lessons. Someone around his house always helpin' him- he don't do nothin'. Why his mother always does his drawin' for him."
"I don't know about his drawing," retorted his cousin, "but I know he does his French. He had a beautiful lesson yesterday. Don't laugh like that, Theophilus, it gets on my nerves."
For Theophilus was laughing shrilly, which perhaps drowned the still louder rustling of the wings. 
"There you go," he jibed, "there you go. He doesn't do his French at all, his uncle does it for him; he did it Thursday night when I was there. I heard him and I ain't tellin' any tales about it, neither," he put in, mistaking the look  on her face, "for he said you'd be interested to have him do it for Tommy. He said he'd tell you about it the next time he saw you."
"Theophilus Jackson, you're crazy. I never say Tommy Reynold's uncle in my life. I don't even know where they live."
"Well, he's saw you," the child persisted and hesitated and looked puzzled-"though he did ask an awful lot of questions about you as if he didn't know you. Well, I don't know what he meant, but he did Tommy's French for him, I know that!" he ended in defiance. 
Some faint prescience must have come to her mind, for she spoke with unwanted alertness. "He asked about me?" she insisted. "Sit down here, Theo, and tell me about it. Who is his uncle?"
"Oh, I don't know, you needn't hold me so tight. I ain't goin' to go. Uncle Dick, Tommy calls him, Uncle Dick somehin'-oh-Winter-Mr. Richard Winter I heard Mrs. Reynolds call him. 'Now see here, Mr. Richard Winter,' she said to him-and she's his aunt, Anna, ain't that funny?-and he's bigger'n she and older, I guess 'cause she looks awful young. I thought aunts were all old like Aunt Em."
She was sure now, and this miserable little boy had known all along. She alternately longed to shake him and hug him. She rrestrrained both desires, knowing that the indulgence of either would dam the fount interminably. 
"Go on, Philly," she begged him. "Maybe I can get Sid Williams to let you have the ukelele right away and you can pay him on the installment plan."
"Well, ain't I tellin' you? Tommy and me, we wanted to go to the movies and his mother said, 'No,' he'd got to get all his lessons first, and Tom winked at me and said he had 'em all, and his mother said 'Not your French,' and Toommy said, 'Well, Uncle Dick's well again now, c'n I ask him to-night?' And just then his uncle walked in and said, 'Hullo what's it all about?'-he talks so funny, Anna, and Tommy said, 'Please do my translation!' His mother said, 'Not till he's reviewed the first part; then, he hasn't seen the part for two months, because he's been studying something else.' And his uncle said, 'All right, hurry up kid, because I must pack, I've got to go away again to-morrow.' And that was when Tommy's mother said, 'Well, Mr.Richard Winter, do you own the railway? Why don't you stay in one place? You've been here and gone again four times