Barbara did not look at all ashamed of herself. She never did when people were cross with her. Mary Wells had the grace to come to her assistance.
‘Please, Miss Smythe,’ she said, swallowing her mortification at the ravages in the head-flannel, ‘it was my fault as well. I took Barbara’s work, to begin with.’
The needlework mistress stared from one to the other. ‘What’s come over the children?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why are you interfering with each other’s work like this?’
Barbara assumed an exaggerated expression of meekness. ‘Please, it was because we were both trying to sacrifice ourselves,’ she announced.
It certainly sounded a ridiculous reason when it was put that way, but it completed the perplexity of Miss Smythe, and that was something.
‘It seems to me,’ she said severely, ‘that you are strangely forgetting yourself, Barbara Berkeley. Commence what I gave you to do at once, and stand up until I tell you to sit down again.’
‘Why, the Canon said we were to forget ourselves,’ began Babs, mischievously; and there is no doubt that a further penalty would have been added to her punishment had not Jean Murray made a sudden diversion by dropping her thimble. In spite of the want of success that had attended Barbara’s attempt at good works, the influence of the Canon was still very strong among the occupants of the junior playroom; and five girls hastily flung aside their work, and bumped their heads together on the floor in their hurry to restore Jean her property. Jean took it with the grudging manner of one who would like to have been in the fortunate position of conferring rather than of accepting a service; and Miss Smythe in despair condemned five more culprits to a standing position.
As luck would have it, the Canon expressed a wish that evening to see what the young people were doing with themselves; and it happened that Miss Finlayson brought him through the curtain into the junior playroom just after the six ringleaders had been ordered to stand up.
‘Very nice, very charming, to be sure!’ murmured the old gentleman, whose benevolent face had gone a long way in carrying his address home to the hearts of his hearers. ‘Such a beautiful and womanly sight, too! I suppose you are all working for the poor, eh, my dears? Very excellent indeed, I’m sure!’
His niece was busy talking with Miss Smythe, and did not correct his mistake; and the children were too shy to do more than look at one another and giggle faintly. The Canon went on, and bent over Mary Wells, who appealed to him at once by the serious expression of her face and her diligent application to the head-flannel.