"I guess," assented Gretta emphatically. "Und you too, you seem scared too yet! What fur a person do you guess I am? We won't eat you, little teacher!"
Hattie seemed less sure of that than she would like to be. She went down the aisle and whispered to one of the older girls.
"Yes, I'll go right off," the visitors heard her reply, and they guessed that frightened Hattie was dispatching her for aid.
"Sing for us once, little dears," said Gretta, having no mind to allow the aid to come. "Und you, you big girl gitting up dere, you sit down und sing mit der littlest ones. School ain't out yet!"
The big girl obediently dropped back into her seat, and Hattie quaveringly began the air of "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me," though she could not remember a word. The children joined in a very slender chorus. The girls on the platform were so uncomfortable that they decided to reveal themselves; with the thick veils over their faces and their rising laughter, they felt nearly on the verge of suffocation.
"Teacher, would you mind going down to the door once, and find my handkerchief for me? Maybe I dropped it coming up," said Gretta.
"Teacher" was only too glad of the chance to get away from the immediate neighborhood of her grotesque callers, of whose lunacy she became more convinced every moment. She hastened down the aisle, and nearly fainted as she heard the wild whoop which arose behind her, accompanied by thumpings and poundings on desks and floor. Apparently insanity was contagious, and the children were as mad as the visitors, from whom her one idea was to escape.
Seizing the last desk for support the little teacher forced herself to turn and face the danger, to discover the cause of this sudden pandemonium. Turning she rubbed her eyes to make sure that she saw aright. Or was it she, after all, who was crazy? There, still in their places on the platform, were the two women, still in their singular garb. But they had thrown back their veils, and poor little Hattie Franz saw, instead of the glaring eyes of the pair of lunatics which she felt sure had invaded her domain, the familiar dark eyes of Gretta Engel, flashing with mirth, and the laughing ones of the girl from New York, both dancing and sparkling at her above the crimson streaks which the ammonia-dipped ribbon had left upon their cheeks!
The older boys were shouting, pounding, cheering; the older girls shrieking with laughter, and the little children were pulling and pounding one another, screaming at the tops of their voices in the general excitement.
The relief of the reaction from her fright, the irresistible fun of the situation was too much for the pedagogic dignity of the sixteen-years-old teacher. She ran up the aisle as fast as her feet would carry her, seized Gretta by the shoulders and shook her as hard as a girl of five feet one can shake a girl of five feet six.