She was really a sweet little likeness of grandma Read in miniature.

“And their names are alike, too,” said Susy:  “grandma’s name is Prudence, and so is Prudy’s.”

“Used to be,” said Prudy, gravely.

“Rosy Frances” was now lifted most carefully into her little wheeled chair and no queen ever held a court with more dignity than she assumed as she smoothed into place the folds of her grandma’s snowy kerchief, which she wore about her neck.

“What shall we do first?” said Flossy and Susy.

“Thee? thee?” Prudy considered “thee” the most important word of all.  “Why, thee may behave; I mean, behave thyselves.”

The new teacher had not collected her ideas yet.

“Let’s get our books together,” said Susy, “and then we’ll all sit on the sofa and study.”

“Me, me,” chimed in Dotty Dimple, dropping the little carriage in which she was wheeling her kitty; “me, too!”

“Well, if you must, you must; snuggle in here between Flossy and me,” said Susy, who was determined that to-day everything should go on pleasantly.

“Sixteenth class in joggerphy,” said Miss Rosy Frances, peeping severely over her spectacles.  “Be spry quick!”

The three pupils stood up in a row, holding their books close to their faces.

“Thee may hold out your hands now, and I shall ferule thee—­the whole school,” was the stern remark of the young teacher, as she took off her spectacles to wipe the holes.

“Why, we haven’t been doing anything,” said Ruthie, affecting to cry.

“No, I know it; but thee’d ought to have been doing something; thee’d ought to have studied thy lessons.”

“But, teacher, we didn’t have time,” pleaded Flossy; “you called us out so quick!  Won’t you forgive us!”

“Yes, I will,” said Rosy Frances, gently; “I will, if thee’ll speak up ’xtremely loud, and fix thine eyes on thy teacher.”

The pupils replied, “Yes, ma’am,” at the top of their voices.

“Now,” said Rosy Frances, appearing to read from the book, “where is the Isthmus of Susy?”

The scholars all laughed, and answered at random.  They did not know that their teacher was trying to say the “Isthmus of Suez.”

The next question took them by surprise:—­

“Is there any man in the moon?”

“What a queer idea, Rosy,” said Susy; “what made you ask that?”

“’Cause I wanted to know,” replied the Quaker damsel.  “They said he came down when the other man was eatin’ porridge.  I should think, if he went back up there, and didn’t have any wife and children, he’d be real lonesome!”

This idea of Prudy’s set the whole school to romancing, although it was in the midst of a recitation.  Flossy said if there was a man in the moon, he must be a giant, or he never could get round over the mountains, which she had heard were very steep.