Are you going away?"
"Yes," said Luther.
"When?" I asked.
"In April," he answered briefly.
[Illustration: GRANDMA KEELER INTRODUCES THE NEW TEACHER.
Scene from the Play.]
"And weren't you ever coming to see me, again?" I murmured with designing
soft reproach.
"I was coming up by and by, to say good-bye," said Luther, brokenly.
"Only for that?" I questioned, and sighed with a perfect abandonment of
rectitude and good faith to the selfish gratification of that moment.
"What else should I come up for?" he exclaimed, breaking out into sudden
passion. "Except to tell you what you don't want to hear; that I love
you, teacher, I love you."
"Oh, hush!" I cried with a little accent of unaffected pain. "It isn't
right for me to let you talk to me in that way, Luther. Oh, don't you
see? you're nothing but a boy to me!"
"That's a lie!" the boy replied, with face and eyes aflame. "And because
I am poor, and because I am more ignorant than you, you make it an excuse
to trifle with me--and you look only to the outside, but you know I have
lived as long as you--a boy's head, you mean," he went on with choking,
fiery bitterness. "And it may be, and you are very kind, God knows! But I
can tell you one thing, teacher, it isn't a boy's heart for you to put
your foot on!"
It was not a boy's strength in the quivering frame and tense, drawn
muscles.
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