"That old rhyme!" Miss Pepperill said, hastily, recovering herself somewhat. "You taught it to Theresa?"
"I wrote it out for her," confessed Mrs. Eland. "I could never forget it. I learned it when I was a very little girl."
"Indeed?" said Miss Pepperill, almost gasping the ejaculation. "So did I."
"That was some time ago," Mrs. Eland said, in her gentle way. "My mother taught me."
"Oh! did she?" exclaimed the other lady.
"Yes. She was an English woman. She had been a governess herself in England."
"Indeed!" Again the red-haired teacher almost barked the expression. She seemed to labor under some strong emotion. Tess noted the strange change in Miss Pepperill's usual manner as she spoke to the matron.
"I think it must have been my mother who taught me," the teacher said, in the same jerky way. "I'm not sure. Or—perhaps—I picked it up from hearing it taught to somebody else.
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son,——'
Not easily forgotten when once learned."