The children were all out on the grass, the most of them with bare feet.
When Mrs. Waverlee caught sight of us, she called with her pretty English accent, “Good morning, dogs, come to me.”
We walked toward her, Gringo with his queer sidewise gait like that of a racking horse. He never picks up his paws, the way a fox-terrier does.
“How fortunate,” exclaimed Mrs. Waverlee, as we lay down on the grass beside her. “Our lesson this morning is on the dog, and I had not a single dog caller. Now, children, do these two friends of mine suggest anything?”
“Tell us about bulldogs, please,” the most of them cried. Two little girls were for fox-terriers, but they were in the minority.
Some people blame Mrs. Waverlee because she allows the children to follow their own bent so much. One day, before the war closed, I heard her say to a lady, “Would it not be cruel when these little creatures come to school, bursting with questions about affairs in Europe that they hear you older ones discussing, for me to pin them down to a lesson in grammar, for example? No, I find out which way their minds lead me, and I follow it. Mornings when they want to know how the Germans and the Allies are getting on, I spread out a map on the grass and give them a united geography, history and peace lesson.”
Mrs. Waverlee shut her eyes, as she spoke. No one knew what agony it cost her to discuss the war, but she was not a woman to dodge her duty. She met it squarely in the face.
The lady who was criticising her, said with reluctant admiration, “My boy certainly does display an unusual knowledge of current events, but I am conservative in my ideas, and would like him brought up along old lines.”
“Then you must take him from here,” said Mrs. Waverlee sweetly. “The best and newest in an educational way is what Mr. Bonstone and Mr. Granton insist on.”