‘Certainly not!’ decided Angela, solemnly. ‘He must never know. Didn’t he say it was splendid to suffer for righteousness’s sake, and isn’t this real righteousness?’
She carried the remaining four with her; and by the time Finny and Miss Smythe joined the Canon in front of them, five out of the six faces glowed with the fervour of martyrdom. The sixth was glowing too, but hardly from such a lofty motive.
‘Well,’ said Miss Finlayson, gently, ‘and what is the reason of this?’
Miss Smythe coughed and hesitated. She did not understand her pupils in the least, but she had a certain feeling of loyalty towards them, and she did not want to get them into trouble. Added to this, she really did not know the reason of it.
‘They–they were a little tiresome, and I made them stand up,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘No doubt–only high spirits, and–and so on. I–I could not quite grasp what had been upsetting them this evening, and I always find standing up is–is an excellent remedy for–for high spirits, in short.’
It was the opinion of the junior playroom afterwards that ‘Smithy’ had got out of it very well; and she went up in its estimation henceforth. But her explanation failed to satisfy Miss Finlayson. There was something about the virtuousness on the offenders’ faces that struck her as being overdone; and she turned to the one at the end of the row, whose countenance was a study in suppressed emotions, and tried to get at the truth of the matter.
‘What was it, Barbara?’ she asked in that tone of hers that would make any girl tell her anything. Not that Barbara, on this occasion, needed forcing.
‘It was because of the sermon yesterday,’ she said, bubbling over with enjoyment of the situation. ‘And we were all trying to sacrifice ourselves, and it was so difficult, because nobody wanted anything done; and then Mary Wells sacrificed herself for me, so I tried to do the same for her, and I only spoiled the baby’s head-flannel, and made Smithy–I mean Miss Smythe–wild. That was why I stood up. The other five stood up because they all tried to sacrifice themselves for Jean’s thimble; and Miss Smythe hadn’t heard the sermon, you see, and she only thought they were being naughty, so––’
‘That will do,’ said Miss Finlayson, and she turned her back hurriedly on the row of martyrs. The needlework mistress was almost in tears at what she considered a wilfully frivolous manner of referring to a sermon by a real canon. But the Canon just passed his hand across his mouth, and then gave up the attempt to look shocked.
‘You are very good little girls to listen so attentively to people’s sermons,’ he said, smiling openly. ‘And I think, if anybody ought to stand up, it should be by rights a certain old gentleman who preaches them. What do you say, Miss Smythe? If I promise to stand up for the rest of the evening, will you let these six young ladies sit down?’