She looked up at him, and they exchanged a glance.
With that glance Miss Jones learnt more about children than she had ever learnt before—more, indeed, than most people learn in all their mortal lives.
“I can't stay,” she said, and she even smiled a little, “if you're always naughty.”
“We won't be naughty any more.” He sighed. “It was great fun, of course, but we won't do it any more. We never knew you minded.”
“Never knew I minded?”
“At least, we never thought about you at all. Helen did sometimes. She said you had a headache when you were very yellow in the morning, but I said it was only because you were old. But we'll be good now. I'll tell them too—”
Then he added: “But you won't go away now even if we're not always good? We won't always be, I suppose; and I'm going to school in September, and it will be better then, I expect. I'm too old, really, to learn with girls now.”
She wanted terribly to kiss him, and, had she done so, the whole good work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his eyes. The moment passed.
“You won't go away, will you?” he said again.
“Not if you're good,” she said.