no
great effort to hide my amusement, and call to her remembrance the
complete assurance with which she was prepared to enter upon her career
during her last term as a Normal Student. I also tell her I have been
expecting this interview and, needless to say, from the humorous side we
naturally turn to the serious.

Teachers are constantly coming to me for advice as to the best method of
dealing with those symptoms of original sin which cause small children
to bewilder their elders by the utter depravity of their moral nature.
What, for example, could I say to Kingfisher who was heard, when praying
audibly, to petition heaven that Rosebud with whom she had quarrelled
might lose all her good marks?

The weeping Butterfly was peremptorily ushered into my presence, accused
of using bad language. I could see by the expression on the teacher's
face that it was no trifling matter. She had said: "Chrysanthemum, when
you walk it is like the hopping of a frog." She had thus compared a
fellow-scholar to an animal, a form of speech which in Chinese, as I
well knew, amounts to a curse.

Peach Blossom, ever since the first day she came to me has been a care
and responsibility. Conscious of her good looks and of her capacity to
secure a following of devotees, she has conducted her small court with
increasing joy to herself, and annoyance to me and my Staff. It was
impossible to ignore her presence, and while she was scrupulously within
the rules and regulations of school discipline she somehow managed to
sail so near, and yet avoid, the point of defiance that we were baffled.

I am sometimes called upon to fulfil the vocation of motherhood in a
very real sense, as when I have to announce to some child who has no
mother that the arrangements for her engagement are about to be
completed, but that her father, who feels he could not expect her to
speak of such a matter, has asked me to find out her desires regarding
the proposed bridegroom. After an inevitable tear, shed at the
suggestion that she must some day leave her father's home, she asks me
if I am satisfied with the plan; on my answering in the affirmative her
face brightens, though she conventionally begs me to use my influence to
dissuade her father from any such intention. I, seeing that no
difficulty presents itself, change the subject and bring her a few days
later the gifts and silver ornaments which indicate that all is settled.
She, having no mother to do the necessar