Though she did not give in, she never succeeded. Her class

was getting in worse condition, she knew herself less and less

secure in teaching it. Ought she to withdraw and go home again?

Ought she to say she had come to the wrong place, and so retire?

Her very life was at test.

She went on doggedly, blindly, waiting for a crisis. Mr.

Harby had now begun to persecute her. Her dread and hatred of

him grew and loomed larger and larger. She was afraid he was

going to bully her and destroy her. He began to persecute her

because she could not keep her class in proper condition,

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because her class was the weak link in the chain which made up

the school.

One of the offences was that her class was noisy and

disturbed Mr. Harby, as he took Standard Seven at the other end

of the room. She was taking composition on a certain morning,

walking in among the scholars. Some of the boys had dirty ears

and necks, their clothing smelled unpleasantly, but she could

ignore it. She corrected the writing as she went.

"When you say 'their fur is brown', how do you write

'their'?" she asked.

There was a little pause; the boys were always jeeringly

backward in answering. They had begun to jeer at her authority

altogether.

"Please, miss, t-h-e-i-r", spelled a lad, loudly, with a note

of mockery.

At that moment Mr. Harby was passing.

"Stand up, Hill!" he called, in a big voice.

Everybody started. Ursula watched the boy. He was evidently

poor, and rather cunning. A stiff bit of hair stood straight off

his forehead, the rest fitted close to his meagre head. He was

pale and colourless.

"Who told you to call out?" thundered Mr. Harby.

The boy looked up and down, with a guilty air, and a cunning,

cynical reserve.

"Please, sir, I was answering," he replied, with the same

humble insolence.

"Go to my desk."

The boy set off down the room, the big black jacket hanging

in dejected folds about him, his thin legs, rather knocked at

the knees, going already with the pauper's crawl, his feet in

their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his

crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her

boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively,

with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys

in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments,

he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one

thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways

his hands in the low-hanging pockets of his man's jacket.

Ursula tried to get her attention back to the class. The boy

gave her a little horror, and she was at the same time hot with

pity for him. She felt she wanted to scream. She was responsible

for the boy's punishment. Mr. Harby was looking at her

handwriting on the board. He turned to the class.