Suddenly Norah arose and approached the bed. “Am I a good girl, mother?” she asked, with a slight catch in her voice.
“What silliness is entering your head?” enquired the old woman. “Who said that you were not good?”
“You said that good people were happy in God’s house, but I am not always happy there.”
“Did I say that?” asked the mother, who had forgotten all about the remark. “Maybe I did say it, maybe indeed. But run away now and don’t bother me, for I am going to sleep.”
“A little bit of paper to be worth twelve pounds!” she mumbled to herself, after a short interval of silence. “Mother of God! but there are many strange things in foreign parts of the world!”
CHAPTER VI
SCHOOL LIFE
I
ON the Monday of the week following Norah Ryan went to school again. She had been there for two years already but left off going when she became an adept at the needles. Master Diver had control of the school; he was a fat little man, always panting and perspiring, who frightened the children and feared the priest. On the way to school he cut hazel rods by the roadside, and when in a bad mood he used them on the youngsters. After he had caned three or four children he became good tempered, when he caned half a dozen he got tired of his task and allowed the remainder (if any remained) to go scot free. Some of the boys who worked in their spare time at peat saving and fishing had hands hard as horses’ hooves. When these did something wrong their trousers were taken down and awkward chastisement was inflicted with severe simplicity in full view of a breathless school.
The school consisted of a single apartment, at one end of which, on a slightly elevated platform near the fire, the master’s desk and chair were placed. Several maps, two blackboards, a modulator, which no one, not even the master himself, understood, and a thermometer, long deprived of its quicksilver, hung on the walls. In one corner were the pegs on which the boys’ caps were hung; on a large roof-beam which spanned the width of the room the girls’ shawls were piled in a large heap. The room boasted of two wide open fireplaces, but only one of these was ever lighted; the other was used for storing the turf carried to school daily by the scholars. The room was swept twice weekly; then a grey dust rose off the floor and the master and children were seized with prolonged fits of sneezing. Outside and above the door was a large plate with the inscription,
Glenmornan National School. 1872.