“What letter, Straggalls?”
“This letter, sir,” said the girl, holding out the crumpled missive.
“Letter? Ah, a letter for you to take, eh?” he said, after a glance at the direction; and his teeth gritted together as he thought that Hazel had never written to him.
He would have detained the missive, but he dared not, and half turning upon his heel, he saw that the vicar’s sisters were coming down the street, an observation which impelled him to make a quick retreat.
“There, go on,” he said; “and mind and make haste back.”
“Yes, sir, plee, sir, that’s what teacher told me to do.”
“Writing to Burge, eh?” said Mr Chute as he re-entered his school. “That’s to tell him that I spoke out to her yesterday. Ah! just let him take her part and I’ll soon give him a bit of my mind. She’s carrying on with him, is she? I know it as well as if I’d been told; but perhaps I shall be one too many with all of them yet.”
The next minute he was bitterly regretting that he had not detained and read the letter, though he knew all the time that he dared not, and he finished up for the present by having another peep at Hazel through the slit above the shutter, expecting, as his brain suggested, that she would be writing another letter, but only finding her busy with one of the classes.
Meanwhile, with her cheeks flushed and eyes brightened at the escape she had just had, Ann Straggalls stumped eagerly along to perform her commission, but only to encounter the Lambent sisters, before whom she stopped short compelling them also to stop or else turn off to right or left, unless they were willing to fall over her. For, according to traditional instruction at Plumton Schools, it was the proper thing for every schoolgirl who met the vicar’s sisters to make a bob to each, and these two bobs Ann Straggalls diligently performed.
“Not in school, Straggalls?” said Rebecca, in a stern, inquisitorial tone of voice.