Then faintly from Fanny, “Please, my lady, mother says I b’aint to swear.”
“I don’t mind,” exclaimed the irrepressible Polly Woodley, starting up, and thrusting her hand forward into Lady Lamerton’s face, “Darn it.”
Her ladyship fell back in her chair; the eye was withdrawn from the hole in the floor, and a laugh exploded upstairs.
“I—I didn’t mean that,” explained the lady, “I meant, not Ecclesiastics, nor Ecclesiastes, which is canonical, but Ecclesiasti—cus, which is not.”
Just then a loud, rolling, grinding sound made itself heard through the school-room, drowning the voices of the teachers and covering the asides of the taught.
“Dear me,” said Lady Lamerton, “there is the keeper’s wife rocking the cradle again. One of you run upstairs and ask her very kindly to desist. It is impossible for any one to hear what is going on below with that thunder rolling above.”
“Please, my lady,” said Polly, peeping up through the nearest knot in the superjacent plank, “it b’aint Mrs. Crooks, it be Bessie as is rocking of the baby. Wicked creetur not to be at school.”
“It does not matter who rocks the cradle,” said her ladyship, “nor are we justified in judging others. One of you—not all at once—you, Polly Woodley, ask Bessie to leave the cradle alone till later.”
The whole school listened breathlessly as the girl went out, tramped up the outside slate steps to the floor occupied by the keeper’s family above, and heard her say:—
“Now then, Bessie! What be you a-making that racket for? My lady says she’ll pull your nose unless you stop at once. My lady’s doing her best to teach us to cuss downstairs, and her can’t hear her own voice wi’out screeching like a magpie.”