Things were in this bad shape when Mr. Nearing, the superintendent, came
to visit her one day. He was so kind and sympathetic that after school
Miss Burch told him the whole story, and asked his advice.
“The trouble with you is,” he said, “that your most prominent
characteristic is one which lends itself to ridicule here in the Middle
West, where we don’t know an Italian “a” from a mud-pie. Now, don’t
think of changing your pronunciation; to do so consciously would be to
be affected. But make the children forget it in something more exciting.
If you’d start a museum for your nature study, or get up a little play
for Christmas, and make Mabel its chief factotum, she’d have an outlet
for her energies, she would still lead her crowd and have their
admiration, and your pronunciation would fade into the background of the
Things That Are. It’s all a matter of relative emphasis.”
Miss Burch did try this plan. She had her room dramatize and then play
The Birds’ Christmas Carol, and in the intense interest of this project
the teacher-mocking was forgotten. When Mabel remembered it again, she
and Miss Burch were such good friends that it was out of the question.