“This is Hugh Wynne, and his friend Jack Warner, Rose and Ruth. They are coming with me to your mother’s after school,” she added, turning to the boys.
“That is fine news,” answered Hugh smiling. “And she will have good cakes for us, and damson jam, and has promised to play at hide-and-find in the orchard with us.”
“What a dear mother you have, Hugh,” Darthea replied. “She is like one of us, yet so lovely a lady, too.”
Hugh nodded, looking much pleased. By this time the five of them had reached the school, a brick building rather plain and grim in appearance. The room where they were to study was long and low, with a huge blackboard at the upper end, near the master’s desk, and a globe by that. The master himself, a thin man with a prominent nose on which rested a pair of horn-bowed spectacles, sat waiting for the shuffling feet to be still and the children to be seated. Then he rose and began the afternoon exercises in a high, disagreeable voice.
Rose and Ruth looked about them, at the subdued rows of children, girls and boys, bent over their slates and books. When the teacher addressed one of these he or she stood up, put hands behind back, and answered in the best manner possible. Often they failed to please the master, however, whereupon he sneered at them, calling them in front of him to his desk. Once he made a boy stand up beside his desk with a paper pinned foolscap fashion on his head, at which the class giggled. But Rose and Ruth felt a helpless anger stir in them. They forthwith hated David Dove with a very real hatred.
Suddenly his eye fell on Ruth, and pointing a long finger at her, he asked her something in an abrupt tone. Confused, she did not catch his meaning.
“What did you say, sir?” she asked, her voice trembling a little.
“You know very well what I said,” returned the teacher, in a cold, slow way. “Answer me at once, or ’twill be the worse for you.”
Ruth looked helplessly at Rose, who flushed, fire leaping into her eyes.
“My sister is not a liar,” she said, addressing the teacher. “She told you she didn’t hear what you asked her, and she didn’t. Ask it again.”