Miss Matilda thought, To-morrow, when she has her lessons to recite, it
will be different.

But Miss Matilda was mistaken; to-morrow, when she had lessons to
recite, it was exactly the same.

Chatter, chatter, chatter, Anna Maria kept it up day after day, from one
end of the week to the other. The industrious girls were seriously
annoyed by it. To the idle pupils it was a new excuse for idleness; to
the silly ones, a new excuse for giggling. And punishment seemed to make
no impression on Anna Maria. Again and again she was ordered to stand up
in the corner. She went meekly and stood there, and in two minutes was
chattering with the girl who sat nearest to her. She was told to stay in
after school a quarter of an hour; half an hour; an hour; an hour and a
half. She never put her head down on the desk and cried, as some of the
girls did when they were kept in; she staid her time out quite
cheerfully, and chattered with all her fellow-culprits. Miss Matilda
thought, This child is simply distracting.

Then she made a rule that Anna Maria was not to speak to any person in
the school excepting her teacher. And what was the result? At all hours
of the day, in the midst of the most important business, Miss Matilda
would be interrupted with talk similar to the following:

"Oh, teacher, may I speak to you one minute?"

"Certainly. What is it?"

"I just want to tell you about my cousin Susie's new doll. You ought to
see it; it is perfectly splendid!--wax face and hands and feet, and real
hair, and--"

"Anna Maria, have I not told you repeatedly that you were not to speak
about anything except what was absolutely necessary? Now do you think
that such conversation is necessary?"

Anna Maria hung her head a little, and then she said, in a sort of
apologetic way, "Well, teacher, it may not seem so, but really it is
necessary _for me_. You see, I get thinking about something, and I can't
stop thinking about it until I have told it to somebody else."

"Well, and when you have relieved your mind in this manner, at the
expense of peace and quiet to the whole school, what then?"

"Oh, then I think about something else."

"Yes, and then you wish to chatter about that."

"But really, teacher, I can't help it. I always was so. Grandma says I
talk more than all the rest of the family put together. In fact, the
family have to be quiet because I talk so much. I always did, you know.
It is one of those things that can't be altered."