Mr. James Tayloe's faint blue eyes shone and twinkled at the first blunder. At the fifth he laughed out the short harsh snarl his pupils were to learn to dread.
"Aha!" He actually snapped his fingers with glee. "You don't know everything then, if you are to be a 'comfort and a pride' to your teacher—his one 'industrious and intelligent pupil!' When I meet with a boy—and especially with a girl—who thinks she can tell me more than I ever thought of learning, I like to take her down a peg or two!"
He need not have said it. The whole school looking on, partly in alarm, partly, I am sorry to say, in amusement that was the livelier for a dash of envy, understood already that for some reason he would enjoy lowering the girl in her own eyes and in the sight of others.
He was a man of strong prejudices and overbearing temper. He had been brought up as a rich man's son, and his father had died poor just as his son had left the university. In order to get the means for studying law, he must teach school for a couple of years, and Major Duncombe, who knew his story, offered him the neighborhood school, doubling the salary out of his own pocket without letting this be known to the young teacher.
He had taken a positive dislike to our poor Flea on Saturday, upon what seemed to him good grounds. Her forced composure under the severe examination to which he had subjected her was, in his opinion, sheer effrontery. She thought too much of herself, and should be taught her proper place. If she had trembled and cried, as several of the other girls had, he would have let her off more easily. She was as vain as a peacock and as stubborn as a mule, in his opinion. Such behavior was rank rebellion, and he meant to put it down with a strong hand.