They did not come when they were called, and Mary knew from their looks and behaviour, that they had been naughty. But she only said to them again very mildly,
“Come, Harry, come Lily,—it is almost recess-time, and you have not said a lesson.”
Harry came along very slowly, at first, and looking sidewise to see if Lily was coming too. At length she took her place beside him, but they missed their tables. They knew they had done wrong, and they felt very unhappy, and they did not think enough about their tables to answer correctly.
When the scholars went out to play at recess-time, Harry and Lily did not swing, and run, and play with one another. They walked about apart, and they hardly knew what to do with themselves.
Harry’s brother Charles went and got his fast-sailing little boat, and ran back to the school-house to Mary, to ask her to print on it in large letters, “The Water-witch.”
Mary laid down her work and took a pen and did it for him immediately, and he said, “I thank you,” and then he ran away, and all the scholars, (boys and girls,) after him, down to the spring, to see how the boat looked upon the water.
She sailed beautifully, and there was quite a little fleet of boats behind her, but the “Water-witch” went ahead of them all.
While they were watching the boats the bell rang for school.
Then Charles took his little boats, and all the boys and girls took their hoops, and ropes, and all their playthings, and put them into a little tool-house, which Charles Linn’s father allowed them to use for that purpose; and Mary made a rule, that every thing must be put into its proper place, so that even their playthings should not be lost.
Then they all came back to school. Mary was there waiting for them. She had not gone out with them this afternoon, but had stayed in school to fit the girls’ work, and to set copies, in books, for the scholars who used pen and ink, and on slates, for the smaller ones.