principal--kept running in and watching, and the pupils--there were
seventy-five--I could barely keep them quiet. There was no teaching. How
could one teach all those? Most of our time, even in 'good' rooms, is taken
up in keeping order. I was afraid each day would be my last, when Miss
M'Gann, who was the most friendly one of the teachers, told me what to do.
'Give the drawing teacher something nice from your lunch, and ask her in to
eat with you. She is an ignorant old fool, but her brother is high up in a
German ward. And give the cat taffy. Ask him how he works out the
arithmetic lessons, and about his sassing the assistant superintendent, and
make yourself agreeable.'

"I did as I was told," she ended with a smile, "and things went better for
a time. But there was always the married teachers' scare. Every month or so
some one starts the rumor that the Board is going to remove all married
teachers; there are complaints that the married women crowd out the
girls--those who have to support themselves."

They both laughed at the irony of the argument, and their laugh did much to
do away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly she
mentioned certain farcical incidents.

"Once I saw a principal hurl a book at a sleepy teacher, who was nodding in
his lecture at the Institute. Poor woman! she is so nearly deaf that she
can hear nothing, and they say she can never remember where the lessons
are: the pupils conduct the recitations. But she has taught in that school
for twenty-three years, and she is a political influence in the ward.
Imagine it!"

They laughed again, and the world seemed lighter. Sommers looked at his
companion more closely and appreciatively. Her tone of irony, of amused and