But, with time and patience, matters began to be slightly ameliorated: slowly, it is true, and almost imperceptibly; but I got rid of my male
pupils (that was no trifling advantage), and the girls, as I intimated before concerning one of them, became a little less insolent, and began to show some symptoms of esteem.
Not a day passed, in that dangerous intimacy of teacher and
pupil, in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie's; my cheek, as we bent together over her sketch-book, almost touching hers.
"You have referred to the letters written by my
pupil," she resumed, addressing Noel Vanstone as soon as she felt sure of herself again.
Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty cents in those easy times) to the
pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Dore Bible?
Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the
pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation.
Ere long I had acquired as much facility in speaking French as set me at my ease with my
pupils; and as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the relation in which professors and
pupils too frequently stand towards each other in those establishments, will consider an important and uncommon one.
He had carried his scrupulous precaution into the arrangements of the locality where his
pupils studied.
In one sense, the
pupil's witty answer might be given by a large majority of sublunary beings.
But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school-
pupils, all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out.
There were rooms unoccupied, even when the limit assigned to the number of
pupils had been reached.
Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some wealth; whereas Miss Sharp was an articled
pupil, for whom Miss Pinkerton had done, as she thought, quite enough, without conferring upon her at parting the high honour of the Dixonary.
"All right," said the Sunday-school
Pupil; "go ahead."
