The second class was taken by another maiden lady Miss Penstemon, sister of Doctor Penstemon, M.D., F.R.C.S., of the High Street. She was thinner and more graceful than the Misses Lambent, and possibly much older; but that was her secret and one which she never divulged.
The Misses Lambent, as before mentioned, bowed with dignity and grave condescension to the new mistress; and, taking her cue from the vicars sisters. Miss Penstemon bowed also, plunging her hand afterwards into her black bag for her smelling-bottle, for she thought the room was rather close.
The bottle she brought out, however, she thrust back hastily, and gave a quick glance round to see if she had been observed; for, instead of its containing a piece of sponge saturated with the colourless fluid labelled in her brothers surgery, Liq. Amm., and afterwards scented with a few drops of an essential oil, the little stoppered bottle bore a label with the enigmatical word Puls. thereon, and its contents were apparently a number of little sugar pills.
For be it known that Maria Penstemon had a will of her own, and a strong tendency to foster crotchets. The present crotchet was homoeopathy, which, without expressing any belief for or against, the doctor had forbidden her to practise.
No, Ria, he said, if you want to go doctoring, doctor the people with your moral medicines. It wont do for you to be physicking one way and me another, so let it alone.
But Miss Penstemon refused to submit to coercion, and insisted in secret upon following her path while the doctor went his, Marias being the homoeopath, while the doctors was, of course, the allopath; and he was a long time finding out that his sister surreptitiously exhibited pilules, for she never did any harm.
Hazel Thorne met with a different reception, however, from downright Miss Burge, who rose from her seat, looked red and flustered, as she called it, smiled, and shook hands.
Im very, very glad to know you, my dear, she said warmly, and I hope youll come and see me often as soon as you get shaken down.
Shaken down! The words jarred upon the young mistress, who felt that she could never become intimate with Miss Burge, whom she left to her class, and then busied herself with the attendance register and various other little matters connected with her duties. Once she stole a glance across at the boys school, to become aware of the fact that Mr Chute was watching her attentively, so was Mr William Forth Burge; and, to make matters worse, half the boys in the classes were following their teachers eyes, so that it was with something like a feeling of relief that Hazel saw that the clock pointed to half-past
ten, the time for closing for the morning, and marshalling the girls in order for walking two-and-two as far as the church.
Chapter Two. The Vicar sees a Gentleman
Books were put away, the lady teachers rose, and, with the exception of Miss Burge, moved towards the door, the latter lady glancing at the new mistress, and, apparently pitying her strangeness, seeming disposed to hang back and walk with her; but Hazel Thornes attention was too much taken up by her task, and getting her little force of about eight-and-thirty or forty girls two-and-two, she started them for church, herself taking the smallest morsel to wit, little Jenny Straggalls under her wing.
Now, the only ways to march forty girls two-and-two to church with anything like order are either to put the two smallest pupils in the front, and then go on rising in years till you have the two eldest in the rear, or to pair off the largest and smallest children together.
If neither of these plans is adopted, discipline is liable to fail. One black sheep will corrupt a flock, and though not a black sheep but a very red-haired frisky lamb, there were qualities in Ophelia, or more commonly Feelier, Potts sufficiently mischievous to corrupt any flock of girls.
The experiences she had picked up at Whitelands were forgotten by Hazel Thorne in the flurry and excitement of this her first morning with her school. The stern looks of the lady teachers had made her feel nervous. It was tiresome, too, just at starting that Mr Chute should be holding his boys in hand at the door, with a politeness of which he had never before been guilty, to allow the girls to go on first to church; and Mr William Forth Burge was standing by him, smiling all over his round, closely-shaven face, which was so smooth that it shone in the sun, and preparing himself for the incense of forty bobs, that he would receive from the girls as they went by.
This was Feeliers opportunity. As one of the biggest girls, she had been placed first with Ann Straggalls, the fair, round eyed, and fat; and as Feelier went marching on with head erect, she turned the said head slowly round towards the boys, and squinted so horribly that her eyes half disappeared beneath the bridge of her nose, and Tommy Sullins, a very wild, excitable little boy, forgot his awe of Mr Samuel Chute, and burst into a loud Ha, ha, ha!