A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

The superintendent’s bell brought the narrative to a sharp close, and the new teacher sat back white and exhausted, the strength gone out of him. Even the kids were talking about killing people. What a lesson! How did the little devils learn all about it, anyway? Why had he ever stayed in this awful place? Why had he ever taken this terrible class?

“Well, you certainly are a winner, Murray,” said the superintendent, slapping him admiringly on the shoulder. “You had ’em from the word go! I never saw the like of you!”

Murray turned a tired face toward Marlowe.

“You didn’t need a teacher for that class, man! They can teach circles around any man you’d put on the job. I never saw the like! What you better do is give each one of those little devils a class to teach. Then you could all quit. I didn’t teach that class, they taught it themselves.”

The superintendent grinned at the minister, who was standing just behind Murray, and the minister grinned back knowingly.

“We’re glad this young man has come to live among us,” he said, with a loving hand on Murray’s shoulder, and somehow Murray felt suddenly like laying his head down on the minister’s shoulder and crying. When he finally got away from them all he went to his room and buried his face in the pillow and slept. He felt all worn out. He had never taken a nap in the daytime before in his life, but he certainly slept that afternoon.

It was quite dark when he woke up and heard Mrs. Summers calling him to come down to supper.

She had a little tea-table drawn up in front of the fire in the living-room, with a big easy chair for him and the Morris chair for herself. There were cups of hot bouillon with little squares of toast to eat with it, and sandwiches with thin slivers of chicken on a crisp bit of lettuce. There were more sandwiches with nuts and raisins and cream cheese between, and cups of delicious cocoa, and there were little round white frosted cakes to finish off with. Murray thought it was the nicest meal he ever tasted, eaten thus before the fire, with the flickering firelight playing over Mrs. Summers’ pretty white hair, and the soft light from the deep shaded lamp over the little white-draped table. Cosey and homey. He found himself longing for something like this to have been in his past.

Mrs. Summers talked about the Sunday-school lesson, discussed two or three questions that had been brought up in her class of young men concerning Paul’s conversion, and Murray was surprised to find that he actually could make intelligent replies on the subject.

But then it all had to be broken up by the entrance of some one after him to go to Christian Endeavor. This time it was a stranger, the Vice-president of the Christian Endeavor, come to ask him to talk a few minutes. He really must do something about this. He was getting in too deep, going beyond his depth. It might be all well enough to pretend to teach a class of kids something he knew nothing about, but make an address in a religious meeting he could not—at least not yet. He had to draw the line somewhere.