"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 nev