“No,” said the mother, “it would be wrong not to do your best; but you must try just as hard to be kind to all the boys and girls as you do to stand at the head.”
“There’s one boy who doesn’t like me,” said Ella meditatively, “and I never did a thing to him. He told the assistant to-day that I was drawing a picture. She told me to bring it to the desk. I was trying to copy the ‘Landing of the Pilgrims’ from our history. She looked at it, and then she said, ‘Ella has taken great pains with it, and it is very well done. Learn your lessons as well as she does, and you may draw, too. And remember that I do not like tale-bearing.’”
“I hope you didn’t smile and look pleased when she said that.”
“No, I didn’t—neither did the boy. I did make up a face, though,” she added a moment later.
“Why, Ella!”
“Oh, just in my mind, I mean. It didn’t do him any harm, and it made me feel a whole lot better.”
CHAPTER XV
ELLA AND THE PRINCIPAL
Ella was right in thinking that the principal liked her. He was severe, often harsh. Sometimes he seemed to delight in making the children uncomfortable, and even in punishing them. When he read the Bible in the opening exercises, he had a way of emphasizing verses about liars and thieves that made his most truthful and honest pupils cringe and think that they must have said something that was false or done something dishonest. With a voice of scorn and utter contempt he would read, “I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed,” and then apply the verses to those pupils who were too lazy to dig, but were not ashamed to beg their classmates for help.
Ella was perhaps the one child in school who was not afraid of him. The only time that he had ever shown to her his liking to frighten and tantalize children was on the day when he had sent for her to come to his office; and that little interview had ended so happily that she always thought of it as a jest. Then, too, he had once known the dead father whose memory she worshiped, and that was enough to win her heart.
To this principal it was something new in all his years of teaching to find himself caring what any pupil thought of him; but it was a fact that when he had made some harsh speech and then caught Ella’s look of surprise and regret, he felt uncomfortable. He would have been amazed if any one had said, “You are much more gentle and kindly because you want that child to think well of you,” but it was true nevertheless.