“Just a minute, before we begin our writing lesson,” announced Miss Mason when, with some noise and fluttering, her classes had found their seats. “I believe in trusting my pupils to a great extent; I can not watch you every minute. Besides, you know as well as I do when you do wrong. I want to know how many of you whispered in the auditorium this morning. Raise your hands, please.”
Poor Meg’s eyes widened in horror. For a moment she was furious at the girl who had spoken to her and so tempted her to whisper. But if Meg was only six years old she was an 38 honest little girl and she knew that in any case she might have whispered. The third-grade girl was probably trying to be friendly, too.
Meg raised her hand. There were half a dozen other hands in the air.
“Tim Roon and Charlie Black. I might have known you would talk,” said Miss Mason severely. “I remember you last term. You may each stay after school this afternoon for twenty minutes. You, too, Alice Cray. I’m surprised at you. And Margaret Blossom––a first-grader, whispering her very first morning. Don’t you know it is against the rules to whisper in assembly, Margaret?”
Meg hesitated.
“Stand when you speak,” said Miss Mason, who certainly was rather severe in her manner. “Did you or didn’t you know you were breaking the rules?”
“I––I––didn’t think about the rules,” stammered Meg, rising and holding on to her desk with both small hands. “But I didn’t know you were going to ask us if we whispered!”
Miss Mason’s eyes suddenly crinkled. She 39 was laughing! When she laughed you saw that she really wasn’t cross.
“Very well,” she said, “we’ll forgive you this time. But I will ask this question every morning, so don’t whisper again unless you are prepared to take the consequences. Now first-graders, take your copy books.”
Meg found her copy book already on her desk, and she was so interested in trying to make a page of letters that would look exactly like those already drawn on the top line that she never looked up when the second grade had their arithmetic lesson at the blackboard. And when the bell rang for recess, she jumped.