Mr. Tomkins cleared his throat, and watched his fingers run around his
hat's brim. He wanted to tell Mr. Jeminy some news; but it occurred to
him that it was no more than a rumor. Finally he said: "There's a new
school-ma'am over to North Adams." He cocked his head sidewise to look
at the schoolmaster. "She knows more than you, Jeminy," he said.

Mr. Jeminy sat bowed and still, his hands folded in his lap. He
remembered how he had come to Hillsboro thirty years before, a young
man full of plans and fancies. He was soon to learn that what had been
good enough for Great Grandfather Ploughman, was thought to be good
enough for his grandson, also. Mr. Jeminy remained in Hillsboro, at
first out of hope, later out of habit. At last it seemed to him as if
Hillsboro were his home. "Where else should I go?" he had asked
himself. "Here is all I have in the world. Here are my only friends.
Well, after all," he said to himself more than once, "I am not wasted
here, exactly." And he tried to comfort himself with this reflection.

He had started out to build a new school in the wilderness. "I shall
teach my pupils something more than plus and minus," he declared. He
remembered a little verse he used to sing in those days:

Laws, manuals,
And texts incline us
To cheat with plus
And rob with minus.

But it had all slipped away, like sand through his fingers. Now he
hoped to find one child to whom he could say what was in his mind.