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performance of such household duties as his little cottage stood in
need of. When these were done, she took some needle-work from her
basket, and sat herself down upon a stool beside the lattice, where the
honeysuckle and woodbine entwined their tender stems, and stealing
into the room filled it with their delicious breath. Her grandfather was
basking in the sun outside, breathing the perfume of the flowers, and
idly watching the clouds as they floated on before the light summer
wind.
As the schoolmaster, after arranging the two forms in due order, took
his seat behind his desk and made other preparations for school, the
child was apprehensive that she might be in the way, and offered to
withdraw to her little bedroom. But this he would not allow, and as he
seemed pleased to have her there, she remained, busying herself 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
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