"Yes, I have had my day, I suppose," says Mrs. Branscombe, wearily. "One can always remember a time when
'Every morning was fair,
And every season a May!'
But how soon it all fades!"
"Too soon for you," says Clarissa, with tears in her eyes. "You speak as though you had no interest left in life."
"Yes, I have," says Georgie, with a faint smile. "I have the school-children yet. You know I go to them every Sunday to oblige the dear vicar. He would have been so sorry if I had deserted them, because they grew fond of me, and he said, for that reason, I was the best teacher in the parish, because I didn't bore them." Here she laughs quite merrily, as though grief is unknown to her; but a minute later, memory returning, the joy fades from her face, leaving it sadder than before. "I might be Irish," she says, "emotion is so changeable with me. Come down with me now to the village, will you? It is my day at the school."
"Well, come up-stairs with me while I put on my things," says Clarissa; and then, though really sad at heart, she cannot refrain from smiling. "You are just the last person in the world," she says, "one would accuse of teaching Scripture, or the Catechism, or that."
"What a very rude remark!" said Georgie, smiling naturally for the first time to-day. "Am I such a very immoral young woman?"
"No. Only I could not teach Genesis, or the Ten Commandments, or Watts, to save my life," says Clarissa. "Come, or we shall be late, and Pullingham Junior without Watts would, I feel positive, sink into an abyss of vice. They might bark and bite, and do other dangerous things."
Mrs. Branscombe (with Clarissa) reaching the school-house just in time to take her class, the latter sits down in a disconsolate fashion upon a stray bench, and surveys the scene before her with wondering eyes.