“No, Ophelia; it is very bad,” said Hazel wearily.
“Then, please, teacher, let me run home and get mother’s smelling-salts. She’s got a new twopenny bottle. Such strong ’uns. Do, please, let me go and fetch ’em, teacher.”
“Thank you; no, Ophelia,” said Hazel, smiling at the girl, whose eyes were sparkling with eagerness. “I have a bottle here. Now, go back to your class, and remember that you will help me most by being attentive and keeping the girls quiet, but not with blows. I do not keep you quiet and attentive, Ophelia, by striking you.”
“No, please, teacher; but mother does.”
“I prefer gentle means, my child. I want to rule you, if I can, by love.”
Feelier looked sharply round to see if she was observed, and then bobbed down quickly, and before Hazel knew what the girl intended to do, she had kissed her hand and was gone.
It was a trifling incident, but in Hazel’s depressed condition it brought the tears into her eyes, and made her think for the first time of how hard it would be to leave her girls if fate said that through this terrible defalcation she must give up the school. The toil had been hard, the work tiresome, but all the same there had been a something that had seemed to link her to the children, and she began to find out now how thoroughly her heart had been in her daily task.
There were endless little troubles to encounter; even now there was a heap of confiscations taken from the children, petted objects that they carried in imitation of their brothers—sticky pieces of well-chewed indiarubber, marbles, buttons; one girl had a top which she persisted in bringing to school, though she could never get it to spin, and had twice been in difficulties for breaking windows with it—at times when its peg stuck to the end of the string. There were several papers of sweets, and an assortment of sweets without papers, and in that semi-glutinous state that comes over the best-made preparations of sugar after being submitted to a process of biscuiting in a warm pocket. Half-gnawed pieces of cake were there too, and fancy scraps of a something that would have puzzled the keenest observer, who could only have come to the conclusion that it was comestible, for it displayed teeth-marks. Without analysis it would not have been safe to venture upon a more decisive opinion.
It had been imperceptible, this affection for her school, coming on by slow degrees; and as in the middle of her morning’s work Hazel suddenly found herself face to face with the possibility of having to resign, she felt startled, and began to realise that in spite of the many troubles and difficulties with which she had had to contend, Plumton had really been a haven of rest and the thought of going completely unnerved her.
She started violently several times over as tap after tap came to the door; but the visitors were always in connection with the children. “Please, may Ann Straggalls come home? Her mother wants her.”