She was out of breath when she overtook her sister. Bea had walked fast purposely to make the others run, loyal Dee having loitered behind with Flea.
"I should think you'd be 'shamed of yourself, stoppin' to talk with poor white folks 'long the road," commented the elder sister.
Flea smiled mysteriously. "I had business with Mrs. Fogg."
"Business! Well, I never! The less you have to do with that kind, the better."
"Mrs. Fogg is not a bad woman, Bea," said Flea, seriously. "When you ask how she is, she always says, 'Pretty well, thank God,' just like Mrs. Elton in Anna Ross. I think she is a very pious person, and it is not her fault that she is poor. I stopped in the porch once when it was raining, and she talked a great deal about the trouble she had had, and how much she prayed, and so on. If I could, I'd be a benefactor to people like that."
"I think sometimes you 'ain't got the sense you were born with, Flea Grigsby. The idea o' you benefacting anything or anybody!"
Flea's smile was yet more mysterious. In her glee over her new scheme she squeezed Dee's arm.
"You wait and see! We know—don't we, Dee?"
"Yes, sir-r-r!" said Dee, stoutly.
The prospective benefactress was still swelling with her secret when they arrived at the school-house. The boys sat on one side of the room, the girls on the other, a narrow aisle separating them. Dee dropped into a seat near the door; the girls walked well forward and took places close to the aisle. Three minutes afterward the teacher appeared in the doorway, and Major Duncombe with him. Whispers and shuffling ceased instantly; all eyes were fixed upon the two gentlemen as they went up to the top of the room, turning there to face the school. It was all quite proper and dignified, until the Major, having motioned to Mr. Tayloe to take the chair ready for him, hung himself, as it were, across the corner of the desk, as Flea had seen him do last Saturday.