"We gives you SEVEN cents so you go home now 'out seeing Teacher. A nickel und two pennies so you go now. Und say, Miss Blake could to go by your side. She has kind feelings over you."
"Nonsense," said the man. "When will your teacher be down?"
"She ain't coming at all. She has no more feelings. So you goes now we gives you a dime and a penny. ELEVEN cents. We ain't got it; on'y we could to get. Teacher gives me all times pennies."
Just as the stranger was wondering how much of truth these extraordinary children knew, Teacher, calm-eyed and unruffled, appeared upon the scene. She said, as she generally did:
"Doctor Ingraham! Who would have thought to find you here!" And then, "Are you talking to my little people? They are the cleverest little things, and such friends of mine. Morris here and I are the greatest of cronies."
Teacher's manner, as she began her greeting, was serene and bright, but a gloomy, even a morose, glance from Doctor Ingraham's cold blue eye quite changed her. His voice too, considered as the voice of love, sounded sulkily as he said:
"So it seems. He has given me an answer which you refused me."
"How generous of Morris and how thoughtful! He's always trying to save me trouble. And the question, now, to which the answer belonged. May one know that?"
"You know it well enough," with a glance up and down the deserted alley, for even Patrick had realized that discretion is the better part of statesmanship.
"Oh that" said Teacher. "And Morris's answer?"