. . for I was freckled once and well do
I remember it. But I don't think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy
called him 'St. Clair' that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from
school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don't think
I'll take any notice of it.

"Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said,
'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many
would you have altogether?' 'A mouthful,' said Lottie. And in the
nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads
shouldn't be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, 'Because it would
rain the next day.'

"It's so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusement
until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild
shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent
cause. She says a man in Grafton went insane once and that was how it
began.

"Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a SNAKE? Rose Bell
says he was . . . also that William Tyndale WROTE the New Testament.
Claude White says a 'glacier' is a man who puts in window frames!

"I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most
interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts
about things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at
dinner hour and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of
themselves. I asked them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some
of the answers were commonplace enough . . . dolls, ponies, and skates.
Others were decidedly original. Hester Boulter wanted 'to wear her
Sunday dress every day and eat in the sitting room.' Hannah Bell wanted
'to be good without having to take any trouble about it.' Marjory White,
aged ten, wanted to be a WIDOW. Questioned why, she gravely said that if
you weren't married people called you an old maid, and if you were your
husband bossed you; but if you were a widow there'd be no danger
of either. The most remarkable wish was Sally Bell's. She wanted a
'honeymoon.' I asked her if she knew what it was and she said she
thought it was an extra nice kind of bicycle because her cousin in
Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married and he had always had
the very latest in bicycles!

"Another day I asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had
ever done. I couldn't get the older ones to do so, but the third class
answered quite freely. El