e can always remember a time when

'Every morning was fair,
And every season a May!'

But how soon it all fades!"

"Too soon for you," says Clarissa, with tears in her eyes. "You speak
as though you had no interest left in life."

"Yes, I have," says Georgie, with a faint smile. "I have the
school-children yet. You know I go to them every Sunday to oblige the
dear vicar. He would have been so sorry if I had deserted them,
because they grew fond of me, and he said, for that reason, I was the
best teacher in the parish, because I didn't bore them." Here she
laughs quite merrily, as though grief is unknown to her; but a minute
later, memory returning, the joy fades from her face, leaving it
sadder than before. "I might be Irish," she says, "emotion is so
changeable with me. Come down with me now to the village, will you? It
is my day at the school."

"Well, come up-stairs with me while I put on my things," says
Clarissa; and then, though really sad at heart, she cannot refrain
from smiling. "You are just the last person in the world," she says,
"one would accuse of teaching Scripture, or the Catechism, or that."

"What a very rude remark!" said Georgie, smiling naturally for the
first time to-day. "Am I such a _very_ immoral young woman?"

"No. Only I could not teach Genesis, or the Ten Commandments, or
Watts, to save my life," says Clarissa. "Come, or we shall be late,
and Pullingham Junior without Watts would, I feel positive, sink into
an abyss of vice. They might bark and bite, and do other dangerous
things."

* * * * *

Mrs. Branscombe (with Clarissa) reaching the school-house just in time
to take her class, the latter sits down in a disconsolate fashion
upon a stray bench, and surveys the scene before her with wondering
eyes.

There sits Georgie, a very fragile teacher for so rough a class; here
sits the vicar with the adults before him, deep in the mysteries of
the Thirty-nine Articles.

The head teacher is nearly in tears over the Creed, because of the
stupidity of her pupils; the assistant is raging over the Ten
Commandments. All is gloom! Clarissa is rather delighted than
otherwise, and, having surveyed everybody, comes back to Georgie, she
being the most refreshing object on view.

At the top of the class, facing the big window, sits John Spriggs
(_aetat._ ten) on his hands. He has utterly declined to bestow his body
in any other fashion, being evidently imbued