“I’m afraid they do,” replied Beatrice quickly, for she could not resist the temptation to say something unpleasant, “but they are so backward.” She meant to have said “badly taught,” but hesitated at the last moment.
“Well, what can you expect?” said Canninge. “The inspector asks too much of children of their class. Why, they could not answer his questions in a first-class school.”
“But this is a first-class school, Mr Canninge,” cried Rebecca sharply.
“Hush, dear; Mr Barracombe is asking the second class some geography questions;” and as they listened they caught the end of an inquiry about the Ouse—its source, tributaries course, and the chief towns upon its banks.
“Well, hang me if I could tell him,” said Canninge; “and I shall be surprised if the children do.”
He was not surprised, for no satisfactory answer came. The children told the inspector the capital of England readily enough, and the names of the principal rivers; but his way was so strange to them that for the most part the little things did not comprehend his questions, and Hazel’s heart sank as she sighed for the apparent density that had fallen upon the different classes.
Everything went badly: the writing from dictation was terrible, and the sentences made of the words read out by the inspector were horribly void of meaning. The Reverend Henry Lambent’s face grew more troubled, the ladies whispered together, and the buzz of the school seemed to Hazel to make her dizzy, as she strove hard, with her nerves strained by excitement, to keep the different classes in order, while every time she thought of the ordeal that had to come, she turned sick with misery, and longed for the end of the day.
“I should like to punch his ’ead, Betsey,” whispered Mr William Forth Burge at last. “What’s the good of asking them children a queshtun like that! They can’t make out a word he says.”
“Hush! Don’t interfere, Bill. It might make Miss Thorne more nervous. Pore dear, she do look bad.”
“I don’t know as I shan’t interfere,” whispered back the great man of Plumton. “I consider that I’ve got a bit of a voice in this school, and I don’t see no fun in this chap going away saying that everything’s wrong when I know it ain’t. How can he tell, just coming strange among the bairns, and asking a few queshtuns anyhow like! If they don’t answer ’em he sets it down they can’t, when I know all the time they can.”