what's
fair. I'm awa' to sleep--you needna answer."

It was trying to the village that Sabbath had to come and go, before
the school examination. But everything waited for arrives in its time.
And this was a Monday worth waiting for. It was a perfect June day,
and the sea, and the sun, and the wind held rejoicing with the green
earth and the mortals on it. If there was envy, or jealousy, or bad
temper among the villagers, they forgot it, or put it aside for future
consideration. Everyone was in his best clothes, the boys and girls
being mostly in white, and the little place looked as if there were a
great wedding on hand. Christine had made an attempt to decorate the
room a little. The boys cut larch boughs and trailing branches, the
men loaned the flags of the boats, the women gave the few flowers from
their window pots, and strips of garden, and Margot, a little sadly,
cut her roses, and gave permission to Christine to add to them a few
laburnum branches, now drooping with their golden blossoms.

The room looked well. The flowers and the flags did not hide the globe
and the maps. And the blackboard kept its look of authority, though a
branch of laburnum bent over it. The schoolmaster was playing a merry
Fantasia as the company gathered, but at a given signal from Christine
he suddenly changed it to the children's marching song, and the rapid,
orderly manner in which it led each class to its place was a wonderful
sight to the men and women who had never seen children trained to
obedience by music.

The Domine opened the examination by reading, in the intense silence
that followed the cessation of the music, three verses from the
eighteenth chapter of St. Luke:

"And they brought unto him infants that he would touch them, but
when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, 'Suffer little children
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom
of God.

"'Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom
of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein.'"

Then the schoolmistress touched a hand bell and a crowd of little
children, none over five years old, gathered round her. Contrary to
the usual practice of children, their behavior and recitals were
better than usual, and laughter and hand-clapping followed all their
simple efforts. Polly Craig was their evident leader, and when she had
told a charming story about a l