“Robert Eliot!” Elsie said reprovingly. “Did you hear me ’point you a monitor to hold Laurence while he’s punished?”
“You better keep away from me,” Laurence warned Robert, as the latter approached, nothing loth. “I won’t do it!”
“I’m goin’ to do it,” said Daisy. “All you haf to do is hold still.”
“I won’t!” said Laurence.
“I guess I better do it with this,” Daisy remarked, and, removing her left slipper as she and Robert continued their advance upon Laurence, she waved it merrily in the air. “What you so ’fraid of, Laurence?” she inquired boastingly. “This isn’t goin’ to hurt you—much!”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “And you better put it back where it was if you ever want to see it again. I’ll take that ole slipper, an’ I’ll——”
“Teacher!” Daisy called, looking back to where Elsie stood. “Didn’t you say this naughty boy had to be spanked?”
“Yes, I did,” Elsie replied. “You hurry up and do it!”
Her voice was sweet; yet she spoke with sharpness, even with a hint of acidity, which the grown-up observer, forgotten by the children, noted with some surprise. Renfrew had been sure that he detected in Master Coy the symptoms of a tender feeling for Elsie. Laurence had deferred to her, had been the first to appeal to her when she sat aloof, had insisted that she should choose the game to play, and when she had chosen, hotly championed her claim to be the “teacher.” Above all was the difference in his voice when he spoke to her, and that swallowing of air, that uneasiness of the neck. Renfrew was sure, too, that Elsie herself must be at least dimly aware of these things, must have some appreciation of the preference for her that they portended—and yet when she was given authority, her very first use of it was to place Master Coy in a position unspeakably distasteful to himself. Sometimes children were impossible to understand, Renfrew thought—and so were some grown people, he added, in his mind, with a despondent glance across the street.
Having glanced that way, his eyes came to rest upon the open window of a room upstairs, where the corner of a little satinwood writing-table was revealed—Muriel’s, he knew. Branches of a tall maple tree gave half the window a rococo frame, and beyond this bordering verdure sometimes he had caught glimpses of a graceful movement, shadowy within the room—a white hand would appear for an instant moving something on the desk, or adjusting the window-shade for a better light; or at the best, it might be half revealed, half guessed, that Muriel was putting on her hat at a mirror. But this befell only on days when she was in a gentle mood with him, and so it was seldom. Certainly it was not to-day, though she might be there; for when she was gloomiest about her environment (of which he was so undeniably a part) she might indeed sit at that charming little satinwood table to write, but sat invisible to him, the curtains veiling her. Of course, at such times, there was only one thing left for Renfrew to do, and legend offers the parallel of the niggardly mother who locked up the butter in the pantry, but let her children rub their dry bread on the knob of the pantry door. Renfrew could look at the window.