As soon as Deliverance had made the turn of the road and was beyond the goodwife’s vision, she began to run in her anxiety to reach the town’s highway and see the reverend judges go riding by. The Dame School lay over half-way to town, facing the road, but she planned to make a cut through the forest back of the building, that she might not be observed by any scholars going early to school. To her disappointment, these happy plans were set at naught by hearing the conch-shell blown to call the children in. In her haste she had failed to consult the hour-glass before leaving home. She was so far away as to be late even as it was, and she did not dare be any later. She stamped her foot with vexation. The school door was closed when she reached it, out of breath, cross, and flurried. She raised the knocker and rapped. A prim little girl opened the door. Prayers had already been said and Dame Grundle had called the first class in knitting.
Deliverance courtesied low to the dame, who kept the large room with the older scholars. There were four rows of benches filled with precise little girls. The class in knitting was learning the fox-and-geese pattern, a most fashionable and difficult stitch, new from Boston Town. In this class was Abigail Brewster.
Deliverance opened the door into the smaller room. At her entrance soft whispers and gurgles of laughter ceased. She had twelve scholars, seven girls and five boys, the boys seated on the bench back of the girls.
The little girls were exact miniatures of the larger scholars in Dame Grundle’s room. Each of them held a posy for her teacher, the frail wild flowers already wilting. The boys, devoid of any such sentiment, were twisting, wriggling, and whispering. Typical Puritan boys were they with cropped heads, attired in homespun small-clothes, their bare feet and legs tanned and scratched.
Deliverance made all an elaborate courtesy.
They slipped down from the benches, the girls bobbing and the boys ducking their heads, in such haste that two of them knocked together and commenced quarrelling. Deliverance, with a vigorous shake of each small culprit, put them at opposite ends of the bench. The first task was the study of the alphabet. A buzz of whispering voices arose as the children conned their letters from books made of two sheets of horn: on one side the alphabet was printed and on the other the Lord’s Prayer. The humming of the little voices over their A, B, C’s made a pleasant accompaniment to their teacher’s thought, who, with every stitch in the sampler she was embroidering, wove in a vision of herself in a crimson velvet gown and stomacher worked with gold thread, such as were worn by the little court lady, the Cavalier’s sweetest daughter. Growing conscious of a disturbance in class she looked up.
“Stability Williams,” she said sternly, “can ye no sit still without jerking around like as your head was loosed?”
Stability’s tears flowed copiously at the reproof.
“Please, ma’am,” spoke up Hannah Sears, “he’s been pulling o’ her hair.”