“Will you tell her you’re solly?” Jasper inquired.
“I don’t know—we’ll see about it,” Chrissie replied, “but any way we won’t make her cry again.”
So Jasper contented himself with cherishing most carefully the very best of his hyacinths, just beginning to show a little colour, as a gift to Miss Greenall, to be presented as soon as it would be fit for her acceptance.
“And if Lelly and Chrissie would werry much like to join,” he said to himself in his generous little heart, “we might give it ’atween us all. I’m sure it’s goin’ to be a splendid one.”
But, alas! before the hyacinth’s delicate pink flowers had reached perfection, and Jasper’s kind plan could be carried out, sad things had come to pass, which I must hasten to tell you about.
The impression made upon Leila and Chrissie by Miss Greenall’s distress was not a lasting one, except in so far as they were more careful in their way of speaking to her; for they knew that Jasper’s eyes were upon them, and that any rudeness to their teacher would not escape him. But beyond this, there was no real improvement. They were careless, unpunctual, and, so far as they dared, disobedient. Still Miss Greenall went on doing her best, and now and then her patience and gentleness had some little good, effect. She was able to tell Mrs Fortescue that things were rather better. “I think I can go on,” she said, “if only Leila was more attentive and Chrissie less heedless.”
It really went to her heart—brought up as she had been in neat and careful ways—to see the children’s destructiveness—copy-books blotted and torn; lesson-books dog-eared and spotted; worse still, frocks and aprons covered with ink, or ruthlessly smeared with fingers much in need of soap and water! And in these kinds of carelessness Christabel was the worst offender, in spite of her occasional good resolutions, always encouraged by Aunt Margaret, to try to be as neat as “you were, when you were a little girl,” in reply to which, her aunt would smile and assure her that good habits of no kind come all of themselves to anybody, man or woman, boy or girl.
It chanced one Sunday morning, when the sisters were, as usual, late in getting ready for church, and their father’s voice had sounded more than once up the staircase hastening them, that Chrissie could not find her prayer-book. Go without it she scarcely dared, for this was the sort of carelessness that Mr Fortescue himself might notice, and when “Daddy” did “notice,” even Chrissie “minded!” Now Leila was the happy possessor of two prayer-books, one of which was practically new, and which she kept wrapped up in tissue-paper in a drawer.
“Oh Lell,” said Chrissie in despair, as Leila was leaving the room, “do lend me your best one, or take it yourself and let me have the one like mine.”
“No, indeed, I won’t,” said Leila, hurrying off, as Mr Fortescue’s voice came again.