“Oh, don’t sew, Mary!” said Ben, pulling her arm down.  “Make me a peacock with this bread-crumb.”  He had been kneading a small mass for the purpose.

“No, no, Mischief!” said Mary, good-humoredly, while she pricked his hand lightly with her needle.  “Try and mould it yourself:  you have seen me do it often enough.  I must get this sewing done.  It is for Rosamond Vincy:  she is to be married next week, and she can’t be married without this handkerchief.”  Mary ended merrily, amused with the last notion.

“Why can’t she, Mary?” said Letty, seriously interested in this mystery, and pushing her head so close to her sister that Mary now turned the threatening needle towards Letty’s nose.

“Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven,” said Mary, with a grave air of explanation, so that Letty sank back with a sense of knowledge.

“Have you made up your mind, my dear?” said Mrs. Garth, laying the letters down.

“I shall go to the school at York,” said Mary.  “I am less unfit to teach in a school than in a family.  I like to teach classes best.  And, you see, I must teach:  there is nothing else to be done.”

“Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world,” said Mrs. Garth, with a touch of rebuke in her tone.  “I could understand your objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you disliked children.”

“I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother,” said Mary, rather curtly.  “I am not fond of a schoolroom:  I like the outside world better.  It is a very inconvenient fault of mine.”

“It must be very stupid to be always in a girls’ school,” said Alfred.  “Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard’s pupils walking two and two.”

“And they have no games worth playing at,” said Jim.  “They can neither throw nor leap.  I don’t wonder at Mary’s not liking it.”

“What is that Mary doesn’t like, eh?” said the father, looking over his spectacles and pausing before he opened his next letter.

“Being among a lot of nincompoop girls,” said Alfred.

“Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?” said Caleb, gently, looking at his daughter.

“Yes, father:  the school at York.  I have determined to take it.  It is quite the best.  Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching the smallest strummers at the piano.”

“Poor child!  I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan,” said Caleb, looking plaintively at his wife.

“Mary would not be happy without doing her duty,” said Mrs. Garth, magisterially, conscious of having done her own.

“It wouldn’t make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that,” said Alfred—­at which Mary and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Garth said, gravely—­

“Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that you think disagreeable.  And suppose that Mary could help you to go to Mr. Hanmer’s with the money she gets?”