"too
deeficult."

Miriam tested their reading. The class had begun. Nothing had happened.
It was all right. They each, dutifully and with extreme carefulness
read a short passage. Miriam sat blissfully back. It was incredible. The
class was going on. The chestnut tree budded approval from the garden.
She gravely corrected their accents. The girls were respectful. They
appeared to be interested. They vied with each other to get exact
sounds; and they presently delighted Miriam by telling her they could
understand her English much better than that of her predecessor. "So
cleare, so cleare," they chimed, "Voonderfoll." And then they all
five seemed to be talking at once. The little room was full of broken
English, of Miriam's interpolated corrections. It was going--succeeding.
This was her class. She hoped Fraulein was listening outside. She
probably was. Heads of foreign schools did. She remembered Madame Beck
in "Villette." But if she was not, she hoped they would tell her about
being able to understand the new English teacher so well. "Oh, I am
haypie," Emma was saying, with adoring eyes on Miriam and her two arms
outflung on the table. Miriam recoiled. This would not do--they must not
all talk at once and go on like this. Minna's whole face was aflame.
She sat up stiffly--adjusted her pince-nez--and desperately ordered the
reading to begin again--at Minna. They all subsided and Minna's carefu
blissfully-smiling face. The others sat back and attended. Miriam
watched Minna judicially, and hoped she looked like a teacher. She knew
her pince-nez disguised her and none of these girls knew she was only
seventeen and a half. "Sorrowg," Minna was saying, hesitating. Miriam
had not heard the preceding word. "Once more the whole sentence," she
said, with quiet gravity, and then as Minna reached the word "thorough"
she corrected and spent five minutes showing her how to get over the
redoubtable "th." They all experimented and exclaimed. They had never
been shown that it was just a matter of getting the tongue between the
teeth. Miriam herself had only just discovered it. She speculated as to
how long it would take her to deliver them up to Fraulein Pfaff with
this notorious stumbling-block removed. She was astonished herself at
the mechanical simplicity of the cure. How stupid people must be not to
discover these things. Minna's voice went on. She would let her read a
page. She began to wonder rather blankly what she was to do to