Ten minutes passed—then a bell rang, and Mademoiselle Bavarde, the French governess, who had been engaged with a very elementary class of small maidens in another room, threw the door open for the six children to pass in, announcing at the same time that Herr Märklestatter had come. Up started the seven girls forming the first class and filed into the Professor’s presence; Miss Meredon was following them, but was detained by a glance from Miss Lloyd.
“I will accompany you and explain to Herr Märklestatter,” she said.
He was a stout, florid man, with a beamingly good-natured face, looking like anything but the very clever, scholarly, frightfully hot-tempered man he really was. He was a capital teacher when he thought his teaching was appreciated, that is to say, where he perceived real anxiety to profit by it. With slowness of apprehension when united to real endeavour he could be patient; but woe betide the really careless or stolidly stupid in his hands! With such his sarcasm was scathing, his fury sometimes almost ungovernable; the veins on his forehead would start out like cords, his blue eyes would flash fire, he would dash from one language to the other of the nine of which he was “past master,” as if seeking everywhere some relief for his uncontrollable irritation, till in the minds of the more intelligent and sympathising of his pupils all other feeling would be merged in actual pity for the man. Scenes of such violence were of course rare, though it was seldom that a lesson passed without some growls as of thunder in the distance. But with it all he was really beloved, and those who understood him would unite to save him, as far as could be, from the trials to his temper of the incorrigibly dense or indifferent students. It was not difficult to do so unsuspected. The honest German was in many ways unsuspicious as a child, and so impressionable, so keenly interested in everything that came in his way, that a word, the suggestion of an inquiry on almost any subject, would make him entirely forget the point on which he had been about to wax irate, and by the time he came back to it he had quite cooled down.
“I do hope, Gueda,” whispered Charlotte to Miss Knox, as they made their way to the German master’s presence, “I do hope that that stupid Edith Greenman has learnt her lessons for once, and that Isabel Lewis will try to pay attention. She is the worst of the two; it is possible to shield poor Edith sometimes.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘poor Edith,’” Gueda replied. “She really does not care to learn. I feel quite as angry with her sometimes as Herr Märklestatter himself.”
“So do I. But it would be such a disgrace to us all to have a scene the first morning, almost the first hour that girl is here.”
“You sheltered Edith last week by an allusion to the comet. You did it splendidly. He was off on the comet’s tail at once, without an idea you had put him there. But I think you can do anything with him, Charlotte, you are such a pet of his, and you deserve to be.”
This was true. Charlotte both was and deserved to be a favourite pupil, and she liked to feel that it was so.
“Well, I hope things will go well to-day,” she said. “I should not like Miss Meredon to think she had got into a bear-garden.”
“Do you suppose she knows much German, Charlotte?” whispered Gueda. She was a very gentle, unassertive girl, who generally saved herself trouble by allowing Charlotte to settle her opinions for her.