"Don't," Dr. Dennis said, nervously. "You will be the third one in a year's time."
"I don't wonder. I wonder that they are alive."
"But, Miss Wilbur, you are a dark and gloomy lecturer. When you demolish air castles, have you nothing to build up in their places? Would you send the babies back into the main room again, to be worn out with quiet and lack of motion?"
"Not a bit of it. I like the baby-room plan as well as any mortal; and I have a remedy which it seems to me would arrange the whole thing. Of course it seems so to me; we always like our own ways. The truth is, Dr. Dennis, I like nurseries, and think they ought to be maintained; but I don't like the idea of too many mothers there."
"Just what, in plain English, would you do, my friend, if you were commander-in-chief of the whole matter, and all we had to do was to obey you?"
"It isn't at all modest to tell," Marion said, laughing, "but it is true. I would banish every one of those twenty teachers, and reign alone in my glory. No I wouldn't either. I would pick out the very best one among them, and train her for an assistant."
"And manage the whole number yourself!"
"Why not? There are only a hundred of them, and I have managed that number for six hours a day, five days in a week, without difficulty."
"Well, now, let me see just what you think you gain."
"It would take too long to tell. In my own opinion, I gain almost everything. But, in the first place, let me suppose a case. We have one good teacher, we will say, in that class, who knows just what she is about, and comes prepared to be about it. She has, say, two assistants, each carefully trained to a certain work; each understanding that in the event of the detention of the leader one of them will be called on to teach the class, each pledging herself to notify the other of necessary absences. Don't you see that it will rarely, if ever, happen that one of the three cannot be at her post? The very sense of importance and responsibility attached to their office will lessen the chance of absence, while one teacher in twenty is almost sure to be away. Then we have those young girls in their places in the Bible class learning to be teachers indeed."