lf with
her work.

'Have you many scholars, sir?' she asked.

The poor schoolmaster shook his head, and said that they barely filled
the two forms.

'Are the others clever, sir?' asked the child, glancing at the trophies
on the wall.

'Good boys,' returned the schoolmaster, 'good boys enough, my dear, but
they'll never do like that.'

A small white-headed boy with a sunburnt face appeared at the door
while he was speaking, and stopping there to make a rustic bow, came in
and took his seat upon one of the forms. The white-headed boy then put
an open book, astonishingly dog's-eared upon his knees, and thrusting
his hands into his pockets began counting the marbles with which they
were filled; displaying in the expression of his face a remarkable
capacity of totally abstracting his mind from the spelling on which his
eyes were fixed. Soon afterwards another white-headed little boy came
straggling in, and after him a red-headed lad, and after him two more
with white heads, and then one with a flaxen poll, and so on until the
forms were occupied by a dozen boys or thereabouts, with heads of every
colour but grey, and ranging in their ages from four years old to
fourteen years or more; for the legs of the youngest were a long way
from the floor when he sat upon the form, and the eldest was a heavy
good-tempered foolish fellow, about half a head taller than the
schoolmaster.

At the top of the first form--the post of honour in the school--was the
vacant place of the little sick scholar, and at the head of the row of
pegs on which those who came in hats or caps were wont to hang them up,
one was left empty. No boy attempted to violate the sanctity of seat
or peg, but many a one looked from the empty spaces to the
schoolmaster, and whispered his idle neighbour behind his hand.

Then began the hum of conning over lessons and getting them by heart,
the whispered jest and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl of
school; and in the midst of the din sat the poor schoolmaster, the very
image of meekness and simplicity, vainly attempting to fix his mind
upon the duties of the day, and to forget his little friend. But the
tedium of his office reminded him more strongly of the willing scholar,
and his thoughts were rambling from his pupils--it was plain.

None knew this better than the idlest boys, who, growing bolder with
impunity, waxed louder and more daring; playing odd-or-even under the
master's eye, eating apple