“I never knew boys who weren’t,” I retorted.
“I—I—think perhaps you would like the girls best,” said Mrs. Allan hesitatingly. If it had not been for one thing—which I would never in this world have admitted to Mrs. Allan—I might have liked the girls’ class best myself. But the truth was, Anne Shirley was in that class; and Anne Shirley was the one living human being that I was afraid of. Not that I disliked her. But she had such a habit of asking weird, unexpected questions, which a Philadelphia lawyer couldn’t answer. Miss Rogerson had that class once and Anne routed her, horse, foot and artillery. I wasn’t going to undertake a class with a walking interrogation point in it like that. Besides, I thought Mrs. Allan required a slight snub. Ministers’ wives are rather apt to think they can run everything and everybody, if they are not wholesomely corrected now and again.
“It is not what I like best that must be considered, Mrs. Allan,” I said rebukingly. “It is what is best for those boys. I feel that I shall be best for THEM.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt of that, Miss MacPherson,” said Mrs. Allan amiably. It was a fib for her, minister’s wife though she was. She HAD doubt. She thought I would be a dismal failure as teacher of a boys’ class.
But I was not. I am not often a dismal failure when I make up my mind to do a thing. I am noted for that.
“It is wonderful what a reformation you have worked in that class, Miss MacPherson—wonderful,” said the Rev. Mr. Allan some weeks later. He didn’t mean to show how amazing a thing he thought it that an old maid noted for being a man hater should have managed it, but his face betrayed him.
“Where does Jimmy Spencer live?” I asked him crisply. “He came one Sunday three weeks ago and hasn’t been back since. I mean to find out why.”
Mr. Allan coughed.
“I believe he is hired as handy boy with Alexander Abraham Bennett, out on the White Sands road,” he said.
“Then I am going out to Alexander Abraham Bennett’s on the White Sands road to see why Jimmy Spencer doesn’t come to Sunday school,” I said firmly.