Before each lies a pile of brightly colored flower petals, and a small paste pot and brush.
Nannina is making yellow violets, Bianca, white ones, and Pepita, blue. See how deftly their little fingers run the stamens through the centres, touch them lightly with the paste-brushes, then wrap the stems, and fasten them!
Already little clusters are forming, and by four o'clock, when school begins down stairs, there will be ever so many bunches of colored violets such as one sees in the windows of the large millinery shops; but who would think such wee hands could put them together so neatly?
It is now a quarter to four. The teacher bids the young folks put away their work, to be ready for school.
"School at four o'clock!" I hear some little girl exclaim.
It does seem late, but then it is an afternoon, or rather an evening, school. For the last half hour the little ones have been pouring into the large school-rooms below, and now the little machine-workers, the lace-weavers, and flower-makers go down to join them.
THE INFANT CLASS.
In one of the rooms, called the nursery, are sitting about one hundred of the drollest and queerest little boys and girls to be found in our great city; most of them are mere babies of three and four years of age; but they look very solemn as they gaze intently on the young teacher, repeating A B C after her.
I wish you could see some of the funny little jackets and trousers, and the curly heads in their bright kerchiefs. Poor little ones, they think they are real down-right scholars; but the truth is, they are only kept there to be out of harm's way, while their bigger brothers and sisters are learning reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography in the other rooms, as boys and girls do in the primary departments of the public schools.