Lily Bell began to cry, and Susan pertly said, "It's our markers, teacher."
"I don't care. I won't have you idle. Give them to me, this instant."
Just then the church bell began to ring, and there was a general moving; but Jessie would not be beaten, and caused the two cards to be given up to her. The girls both cried with all their might while she was marking the class down, and, as they no doubt intended, Miss Manners came to see what was the matter.
"Please, ma'am, teacher has taken away our markers, and we shan't know where our Psalms is."
"They were playing with them," said Jessie.
"We wasn't. We was finding our Psalms," said Susan.
"You should not have done so while Miss Hollis was teaching," said Miss Manners. "I hope, if she is good enough to give them back to you, that you will attend better in the afternoon."
Jessie felt it all a little flat and disappointing, all the more so that Amy Lee joined her, and talked all the way to church about the children, who had all passed through her hands when she was a pupil teacher, telling all their little tiresome ways. It seemed to rub off all the gloss, and to change her scheme of feeding the young lambs for the Great Shepherd's sake into a mere struggle with tiresome, fidgety children.
Still her hopes and her spirits rose again at church. She had her expounding of the Sower on her mind, and hoped yet to deliver it when she went to afternoon school; but there proved to be the Catechism and a whole set of hymns to be said, and questions to be asked about them. These questions did not come very readily to such an unpractised tongue as hers, and she thought she could lead off into the discourse she had thought out over the Bible. But she had hardly gone through twenty words before she saw a squabble going on between Lily Bell and Mary Smithers, and she had no sooner separated them, and taken up the thread of her discourse about grace being sown and watered in our hearts, than Susan Bray popped up up with "Please, teacher, it's time to read to us—Its Miss Angelina," pointing to a little gay story-book.
"You should not be rude, and interrupt," said Jessie; whereupon Susan pouted, the two idlest began to play with each other's fingers, and, as soon as she paused to take breath, Lily Bell jumped up, and brought her the book open.