"You must ask Mr Canninge, Hazel, or else Mr Burge or Mr Lambent,"
said Mrs Thorne dictatorially. "Either you must ask one of those
gentlemen, or I shall certainly feel that it is my duty to leave Plumton
and seek a refuge at the home of one of my relatives."
"Mother," said Hazel decidedly, "I cannot ask one of those gentlemen.
Can you not see that it would be a degradation that I could not bear?"
"If you would think less of your own degradation, Hazel, and more of
mine," said Mrs Thorne, "I think it would be far more becoming on your
part."
It was breakfast-time, and, hot-eyed, feverish, and weary, Hazel was
trying to force down a few morsels of dry bread as she sipped her weak
tea.
She made no reply, but was working hard to find some solution of the
difficulty in which she found herself, but could see none.
One thing was evident to her, and that was the fact that she must take
the full blame of the pence being missing, and undertake to pay it out
of her next half-year's salary. It was impossible for her to accuse her
mother, and she could think of no relatives who would advance the money.
Her head ached violently, and she was suffering from a severe attack of
lassitude that deadened her brain-power making her ready to go back to
her bed and try to forget everything in sleep.
But there was the day's work to meet and at last, in a dreary, hopeless
spirit, she went to the school, seeing Mr Chute on his way to the
duties of the day, and meeting his eye, which was full of an ugly,
malicious expression, that made her shrink and feel that she had indeed
made this man her enemy.
The children were more tiresome than usual, or seemed to be, and it was
only by a great effort that she was able to keep her attention to the
work in hand.
At another time she would not have noticed it, but now every tap at the
schoolhouse door made her start violently, and think that it was the
churchwarden, Mr Piper, come for the school pence.
"A guilty conscience needs no accuser," she thought to herself, as she
set to once more trying to see her way to some solution of her
difficulty, but always in vain; and at last she found herself letting
the trouble drift till it should find bottom in some shallow shoal or
against the shore, for nothing she could do would help her on.
The only thing she could hit upon was to say to the churchwarden that
she would bring him up the money shortly, and in the meantime she might
find out some means of raising it wishing the while that the jewellery
of which she once had a plentiful supply was still her own.
She could think of no other plan, and was drearily going on with her
work, when there came a loud tap from one of the lower classes, presided
over at that time by Feelier Potts, and followed by a howl.
"What is that?"
"Please, teacher, Feely Potts hit me over the head with a book."
"Please, teacher, I kep' on telling her you'd got a bad headache,
teacher, and told her to be quiet, and she would keep on making a noise,
and--and--and I think I did box her with the Testament, teacher."
"But you know, Ophelia how strictly I have forbidden any monitor to
touch one of her class."
"Yes, please, teacher; and I wouldn't have touched her now, only I knew
you'd got such a bad headache, and she would be so tiresome I felt as if
I could knock her head right off."
"Ophelia!" exclaimed Hazel, as she felt ready to smile at what was
evidently a maternal expression.
"Please, teacher, I won't do so no more."
"Then go to your class. I shall trust you, mind. You have given me
your word."
"Yes, teacher," cried the girl eagerly; "and is your head better,
please, teacher!"
"No, Ophelia; it is very bad," said Hazel wearily.
"Then, please, teacher, let me run home and get mother's smelling-salts.
She's got a new twopenny bottle. Such strong 'uns. Do, please, let me
go and fetch 'em, teacher."
"Thank you; no, Ophelia," said Hazel, smiling at the girl, whose eyes
were sparkling with eagerness. "I have a bottle here. Now, go back to
your class, and remember that you will help me most by being attentive
and keeping the girls quiet, but not with blows. I do not keep you
quiet and attentive, Ophelia, by striking you."
"No, please, teacher; but mother does."
"I prefer gentle means, my child. I want to rule you, if I can, by
love."
Feelier looked sharply round to see if she was observed, and then bobbed
down quickly, and before Hazel knew what the girl intended to do, she
had kissed her hand and was gone.
It was a trifling incident, but in Hazel's depressed condition it
brought the tears into her eyes, and made her think for the first time
of how hard it would be to leave her girls if fate said that through
this terrible defalcation she must give up the school. The toil had
been hard, the work tiresome, but all the same there had been a
something that had seemed to link her to the children, and she began to
find out now how thoroughly her heart had been in her daily task.
There were endless little troubles to encounter; even now there was a
heap of confiscations taken from the children, petted objects that they
carried in imitation of their brothers--sticky pieces of well-chewed
indiarubber, marbles, buttons; one girl had a top which she persisted in
bringing to school, though she could never get it to spin, and had twice
been in difficulties for breaking windows with it--at times when its peg
stuck to the end of the string. There were several papers of sweets,
and an assortment of sweets without papers, and in that semi-glutinous
state that comes over the best-made preparations of sugar after being
submitted to a process of biscuiting in a warm pocket. Half-gnawed
pieces of cake were there too, and fancy scraps of a something that
would have puzzled the keenest observer, who could only have come to the
conclusion that it was comestible, for it displayed teeth-marks.
Without analysis it would not have been safe to venture upon a more
decisive opinion.
It had been imperceptible, this affection for her school, coming on by
slow degrees; and as in the middle of her morning's work Hazel suddenly
found herself face to face with the possibility of having to resign, she
felt startled, and began to realise that in spite of the many troubles
and difficulties with which she had had to contend, Plumton had really
been a haven of rest and the thought of going completely unnerved her.
She started violently several times over as tap after tap came to the
door; but the visitors were always in connection with the children.
"Please, may Ann Straggalls come home? Her mother wants her."
"Please I've brought Sarah Jane Filler's school money." Then there were
calls from a couple of itinerant vendors of wonderfully-got-up
illustrated works, published in shilling and half-crown parts, to be
continued to infinity, if the purchaser did not grow weary and give them
up.
At last there came a more decided knock than any of the others, and
Hazel's heart seemed to stand still. She knew, without telling, that it
was the churchwarden, and she was in no wise surprised at seeing him
walk in with his hat on, without waiting to have the door opened, but
displaying a certain amount of proprietorship only to be expected from
an official of the church.
Mr Piper was the principal grocer of Plumton, and in addition to the
sale of what he called "grosheries," he dealt largely in cake--not the
cake made with caraways or currants, but linseed oil-cake, bought by the
farmers for fattening cattle and giving a help to the sheep. Mr Piper
"did a little," too, in corn, buying a lot now and then when it was
cheap, and keeping it till it was dear. There were many other things in
which Mr Piper "did a little," but they were always bits of trading
that meant making money; so that take him altogether, he was what people
call "a warm man," one who buttoned up his breeches-pockets tightly, and
slapped them, as much as to say, "I don't care a pin for a soul--I'm too
independent for that."
This was the gentleman who, tightly buttoned up in his best coat, and
looking, all the same, as if he still had his shop-apron tied, walked
importantly into the school with his hat on, and nodded shortly as the
girls began to rise and make bobs, the curtseys being addressed to the
broadcloth coat more than to Mr Piper himself, a gentleman of whom all
the elder girls had bought sweets, and who was associated in their minds
with the rattling and clinking of copper scales with their weights. For
a goodly sum per annum was expended by the Plumton school children in
delicacies, a fact due to the kindness of Mr William Forth Burge, who
always went down the town with half-a-crown's worth of the cleanest
halfpennies he could get, a large supply of which was always kept for
him by Mr Piper's young man, who even went so far as to give them
a-shake-up in a large worsted stocking with some sand and a sprinkling
of vitriol, knowing full well that these halfpence were pretty sure to
come to him again in the course of trade.
It was, then, to Mr Piper's best coat that the girls made their bobs,
that gentleman being held in small respect. In fact as soon as he
entered Feelier Potts went round her class, insisting upon every girl
accurately toeing the line; and then, whispering "Don't laugh," she
began to repeat the words of the national poet who wrote those touching,
interrogative lines beginning, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers," and finishing off with, "Please, Mr Piper, I want a pen'orth
of pickled peppers."
"'Morning, Miss Thorne," said Mr Piper importantly, and speaking in his
best-coat voice, which was loud and brassy, and very different to
his mild, insinuating, "what's-the-next-article, ma'am,
yes-it-is-a-fine-morning" voice, which was used behind the counter, and
went with a smile.
"She ain't ready with that money, I'll lay a crown," said Mr Piper to
himself. Then aloud--"I have been getting Mr Chute's school pence,
Miss Thorne, to put in my accounts. I always collect the school money
once a year."
Just then the school-door opened quietly, unheard by Hazel and the
churchwarden, and also unnoticed by Miss Feelier Potts, who, forgetting
all promises of amendment, was delighting her class by asking Mr Piper
in a low voice for half-ounces and pen'orths of all sorts of impossible
articles suggested by her active young brain, beginning with sugared
soap, and on through boiled blacklead to peppermint mopsticks.