"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea----"

scanned Gyp in a singsong voice. Then she stopped abruptly; she realized that Miss Gray was not hearing a word that she was saying!

Miss Gray had asked Gyp to come to her after school. It was a glorious winter day and Gyp's friends were playing hockey on the little lake. Gyp had faced Miss Gray resentfully.

"Please scan three pages, Miss Westley," Miss Gray had said, putting a book into Gyp's hands. And now, in the middle of them, Miss Gray was staring out across the snowy slopes of the school grounds, not hearing one word, and blinking real tears from her pale-blue eyes!

Little Miss Gray, for years, had come and gone from Lincoln in such a mouse-like fashion that no one ever paid much attention to her; upon her changing classes, as an individual, she left scarcely any impression; as a teacher she was never cross, never exacting, gave little praise and less censure; she worked more like a noiseless, perfect machine than a human being.

Gyp had never noticed, until that moment, that she had blue eyes--very pretty blue eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. No one could see them because she was nearsighted and wore big, round, shell-rimmed glasses, but now she had removed these in order to wipe her tears away. Gyp, fascinated by her discoveries, stared openly.

Gyp's heart never failed to go out to the downtrodden or oppressed, beast or human. Now she suddenly saw Millicent Gray, erstwhile teacher in Second-year English, as an appealing figure, very shabby, a pinched look on her oval-shaped face that gave the impression of hunger. Her hair would really be very pretty if she did not twist it back quite so tight. She was not nearly as old as Gyp had thought she was. And her tears were very pathetic; she was sniffing and searching in a pocket for the handkerchief that was probably in her knitting bag.

"T-that will d-do, Miss Westley," she managed to say, still searching and sniffing.

But Gyp stood rooted.

"I'm sorry you feel bad, Miss Gray. Will you take my handkerchief? It's clean," and Gyp, from the pocket of her middy blouse, proudly produced a folded square of linen.

"You wouldn't believe that just that could open the flood-gates of a broken heart," she exclaimed later to Jerry and Pat Everett, feeling very important over her astonishing revelation.

"Who'd ever dream that Miss Gray could squeeze out the littlest tear," laughed Pat, at which Gyp shook her head rebukingly.

"Teachers are human and have hearts, Pat Everett, even if they are teachers. And romance comes to them, too. Miss Gray is very pretty if you look at her real close and she's quiet because her bosom carries a broken heart."

Sympathetic Jerry thought Gyp's description very wonderful. Pat was less moved.

"What did she tell you, Gyp?"

Gyp hesitated, in a maddening way. "Well, I suppose it was giving her the handkerchief made her break down and I don't believe she thought I'd come straight out here and tell you girls. And I'm only telling you because I think maybe we can help her. After she'd taken the handkerchief and wiped her nose she took hold of my hand and pressed it hard and told me she hoped I'd never know what loneliness was. And then I asked her if she didn't have anyone and she said no--not a soul in the whole wide world cared whether she lived or died. Isn't that dreadful? And she said she didn't have a home anywhere, just lived in a horrid old boarding house. Well, she was beginning to act more cheerful and I was afraid she was recovering enough to tell me to go on with the scanning, so I got up my nerve and I asked her point-blank if she'd ever had a lover----"

"Gyp Westley----" screamed Pat.

"Well, there wasn't any use beating 'round the bush and I knew we'd want to know and I read once that men were the cause of most heartaches, so I asked her----"

"What did she say? Wasn't she furious?"

"No--I think she was glad I did. Maybe, if you didn't have any family and lived in a great big boarding house where you couldn't talk to anyone except 'bout the weather and the stew and things, you'd even like to confide in me. She just blushed and looked downright pretty, but dreadfully sad. She said she'd had a very, very dear friend--you could tell she meant a lover--but that it was all past and he had forgotten her. I suppose I should have said to her that it's 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,' but I just asked her if he was handsome, which was foolish, because she'd think he was if he was as homely as anything."

"And was he?"

"She said he was distinguished--a stra............