“I am on the stool of the learner,” sneered the girl.
At that moment, through the ceiling, or rather boards above, dropped a black-handled kitchen fork within a hair’s breadth of Arminell’s head. She drew back, startled.
“What is it? What is the matter?” exclaimed Lady Lamerton. “Run up, Polly Woodley!—no, not you this time; you, Fanny White, and see what they are about upstairs.”
“Please, my lady,” said Polly, peering into the higher regions through the hole, “Bessie have given the baby the knives and forks to play with, ’cause you wont let her rock the cradle, and to keep ’un from crying. He’s a shoving ’em through the floor.”
Then, down through the knot-hole descended a shower of comfits. The child had been given a cornet by its mother, and had eagerly opened it, over the hole where it had poked the fork.
The school floor was overspread with a pink and white hail-shower. In a moment, all order was over. The classes broke up into individual units, all on the floor, kicking, scratching, elbowing, grabbing after the scattered comfits, thrusting fingers into eyes, into soapy water; getting them trodden on, nipped between slates, a wriggling, contending, greedy, noisy tangle of small humanity, and above it stood my lady protesting, and Captain Tubb nibbling the ends of his sandy beard, and looking dazed; and Arminell Inglett, half angry, half amused, altogether contemptuous.
“There!” exclaimed Lady Lamerton, “the bells are going for divine service. In places at once—Let us pray!”
The church bells were ringing, the Sunday-school had at last been reduced to order, arranged in line, and wriggled, sinuous, worm-like, along the road and up the avenue to the church porch. Lady Lamerton, brandishing her sunshade as a field-marshal’s baton, kept the children in place, and directed the head of the procession.
But with what heart-burnings, what envies, what excited passions did that train sweep on its way. Some of the children had got more comfits than others, and despised those less favoured by luck, and others comfitless envied the more successful. Polly Woodley had secured more comfits than the rest, and had them screwed in the corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and she thrust it exultantly under the eyes of Fanny White, who had come off with one only.