Mistress Kent was silent for a time after Sally had spoken. She was thinking to herself:
"This is something new. Here is a little maid ten or eleven years of age, who, all by herself, has come to my door, saying that learning she wants and must have, and will gladly pay for it what she can with her own small hands."
But the Mistress had to be wise and prudent. The children who came to her school were well taught and well reared, came of proud parents who paid well for their schooling, and would never let their little people associate with children of the poorer classes.
They were all well dressed, carefully washed and combed, wore fine stockings and tasteful shoes, and had high notions already in their own proud little heads.
So Mistress Kent, who had a good, kind heart under her stiff waist, was quiet so long a time that Sally raised her eyes and saw a look of trouble on the face of the schoolmistress. She was looking far off on the distant fields, and was surely trying to think something out. At length she said, slowly and distinctly:
"It would not be best, little maiden, for you to enter the classes with other young persons of your age, for they would be too far beyond you in their studies. Nor can I feel it would do to enter you with A, B, C scholars, for they would be much younger, and smaller in stature than yourself.
"But I like not to send away either lad or maid who desires greatly to learn. Twice a week, I go a few miles to pay a short visit to a sister who is lame; if then you will come promptly of a Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, when school does not keep, and look gently after my aged mother, and also do a little plain sewing,—for I like not that the hands should be idle,—I will on other evenings of the week lend you books and faithfully teach you to read well, write, and spell."
Sally almost forgot her fear and cried out, "Oh, thank you, thank you, good Mistress Kent! I will indeed take good care of the aged mother, and do the sewing with a careful eye."
And then, as if unable to help it, she ran forward and put a kiss on the teacher's thin neck.
The spinster flushed rosy red and said, in a voice that trembled: