of the latch, as a fierce-looking
woman walked straight in, exclaiming loudly--

"Where's my gal? I want that gal of mine."

Feelier Potts saw the stout fierce-looking woman, whose aspect indicated
that she had been washing, enter the schoolroom, and knew perfectly well
who she was and what she wanted, but Feelier sat perfectly still, and
ready to disown all relationship, probably from a faint hope that she
might rest unseen; but it was not to be, for, as the stout woman raised
her voice and exclaimed again, "Where's my gal?" fat Ann Straggalls,
with the most amiable of intentions, and prompted by a notable desire to
do the best she could to oblige, exclaimed loudly--

"Please, Mrs Potts, Feelier's here. Oh--oh! Please, teacher,
Feelier--oh my! oh!"

Ann Straggalls was howling loudly, for, just as she finished her
announcement of Feelier's whereabouts, that young lady threw out one
youthful leg, and delivered a sharp kick on Ann Straggalls' shin, the
kick being the sharper from the fact that the class of boot worn by the
Potts family was that known as "stout" and furnished with nails.

"What is the matter here?" exclaimed Hazel, hurrying to the spot.

"Oh, it's that gal of mine," said Mrs Potts, also hurrying up from
another direction. "You just come here, miss."

"Please, teacher, Ann Straggalls's been telling tales."

"Please, teacher, she ki-ki-kicked me."

"You come here, miss," cried Mrs Potts, who had not the slightest
veneration in her nature; and she made a grab at her daughter, who
avoided it by a backward bound over the form upon which she had been
seated, and keeping several girls between her young person and her irate
mamma.

"Mrs Potts, I presume?" said Hazel.

"Yes, my name's Potts, and I'm not ashamed of it neither," said the
woman. "I want my gal."

"Will you have the goodness to come to the door and speak to me?" said
Hazel. "I cannot have the discipline of the school interrupted like
this, Mrs Potts."

The irate lady was about to make an angry retort, but that word
"discipline" was too much for her. Mrs Potts had a husband whose
weakness it was to have "bad breakings out" at times. Not varieties of
eczema, or any other skin disease, but fits of drunkenness, when he
seemed to look upon the various branches of his family as large or small
kinds of mats, which it was his duty to beat, and, from his wife
downwards, he beat them accordingly whenever they came within his reach.
The c