CHAPTER XVII
ALTHOUGH May had come Tommy’s Ladies had not yet gone. Much to Mrs. Radford’s annoyance their money was still holding out.
Here and there in the woods of Draeth late primroses lingered; while purple-tinged anemones still caught the sun that was cut off more and more each day by the slowly unfolding leafy screen of the oaks.
Miss Lavinia had read lately that in other schools children were learning about flowers and birds and even about the things that crawled. In connexion with this she had read much of Educational Values that she did not understand in the very least. But it seemed to her a delightful change that sometimes in the afternoon the little girls should put aside their hemming and that the little boys should sponge out their sums, and that they should then talk about the flowers the children gathered in the woods and in the lanes.
Miss Lavinia bought a book which helped her to look intelligently at the flowers and to understand the wonders that were there. Again and again she was surprised to find that the children, as a result of their own observations, saw many things that she herself did not know of until she had read about them in her little book.
Mr. Toms, the draper, sent his children to Miss Lavinia’s school. This Mr. Toms was the son of the Mr. Toms from whom Tommy’s Mammy bought the cloth for her green coat so many years ago. He was a very practical, go-ahead man, was the present Mr. Toms; a man whose motto was “Progress,” and by progress he meant “Push,” and “Getting on in the World.”
Mr. Toms felt that afternoons spent in the study of common wild flowers represented so much waste of time. So keenly did he feel this that one early closing day he called on Miss Lavinia to talk to her about the matter. Miss Lavinia received him in the best parlour and was very nervous, for a visit from the parents of her pupils was a most unusual event.
Mr. Toms sat down on the extreme edge of one of Miss Lavinia’s Chippendale chairs, and after clearing his throat loudly explained to her that what he paid for was a good sound education with no high-falutin’ nonsense. Sums and such had made him the man he was; sums and such would surely train his boys to follow worthily in their father’s footsteps.