find how many parallel
passages there were, and how beautifully they explained one another when
she made time for comparing them on Sunday morning. She saw herself
beforehand expounding them to the children, and winning their hearts, as
her friend in the hospital had described, and she was quite ready in her
neat black silk and fur jacket, with a little blue velvet hat, when Amy
Lee came to call for her, in her grey merino, black cloth coat, and
little hat to match.

They met Miss Manners at the school door, and were pleasantly greeted,
and taken into the large cheerful room, all hung round with maps and
pictures, where the classes were assembling, and one or two of the other
teachers had come.

The bell was heard ringing, and while the children trooped in, Miss
Manners showed Jessie a chair with some books laid open upon it, the
class register on the top, and said:

"I am sorry there has not been time to talk over your work this week;
but I have laid out the books for you, and if you are in any difficulty
come and ask me."

By this time the children had come in and taken their places, and Jessie
was pleased to see that her class was of children of eight or nine years
old--not such little ones as Amy had threatened her with. Miss Manners
went to the harmonium and gave out a Sunday morning hymn, which was very
sweetly sung, and then she read prayers, everybody kneeling, and making
the responses, so that Jessie enjoyed it greatly, and felt quite
refreshed by the prayer for a blessing on the teachers and the taught.
Then Miss Manners told the eight little girls who stood in a row that
Miss Hollis would teach them, and she hoped they would be very good and
steady and obedient, and say their lessons perfectly.

Jessie knew all but two who came from the other end of the parish, and
were not customers of her mother--at least she knew what families they
belonged to, and had only to learn their Christian names from her list.

"Collect, please teacher," said the first girl, Susan Bray, very much in
the voice in which she would have said "Candles, please miss," in the
shop.

The Prayer-book was uppermost, and Jessie found she had to hear the
Collect for the day repeated by five perfectly, by two rather badly, and
one broke down altogether. The question-book lay open under it. Some of
the questions were very easy, but of others Jessie was not sure that the
children were right when they replied to some quite glibly, and she