“I guess I can use ’em if I want to—so now, Tess Kenway!” exclaimed Dot, pouting. “Words don’t belong to anybody in particular, and I’ve as good a right to ’em as you have.”
This revolt against her criticism rather staggered Tess. But she had much more serious problems to wrestle with at school just then.
In the first place Miss Pepperill was very “trying.” Tess would not admit that the red-haired teacher was cross.
After a vacation of nearly two weeks the pupils had, of course, gotten quite out of hand. They were not only uneasy and had forgotten the school rules, but they seemed to Miss Pepperill to be particularly dull. Every little thing annoyed the teacher. She almost lost her voice trying to explain to the class the differences in tense—for they took up some simple grammar lessons in that grade.
One day Miss Pepperill completely lost her temper with Jakey Gerlach, who, in truth, was not her brightest pupil.
“I declare, Jakey, you never will get anywhere in school. You’re always at the bottom of the class,” she told him, sharply.
“Vell, does idt matter, teacher?” propounded Jakey, “whether I am at top or at bottom of de class? You teach de same at bot’ ends.”
At the end of each day the teacher was despairing. Tess always waited, timidly, to walk to the car with her. There was a crosstown car that made the trip from school to boarding house fairly easy for Miss Pepperill.
Perhaps, had she remained at the hospital with her sister, where she would have been more or less under Dr. Forsyth’s eye, the final disaster in Miss Pepperill’s case would not have arrived.
She really lost control of her scholars after a few days. In her room, where had always been the greatest decorum because the children feared her, there was now at times much confusion.