That reflection on my mother settled everything.  I sat as rigid as a rock.

Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself afresh.

“You minx!  We’ll see who’s mistress here. . . .  Will none of you big girls come and help me?”

With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to the schoolmistress’ assistance.  It was Nessy MacLeod, and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes.  By this time the schoolmistress’ hands, and I think her neck were scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.

“Stand there, miss,” she said, “and move from that spot at your peril.”

My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious position.

“Children,” cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the scholars, “put down your slates and listen.”

Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my side and pointing down to me: 

“This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little vixen, and she has not belied her character.  By gross disobedience she has brought herself to where you see her.  ’Spare the rod, spoil the child,’ is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them.  But there is no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition.  Children, she was sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . .”

With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped back and left me.  I knew what she was doing—­she was taking her cane out of her desk which stood by the wall.  I heard the desk opened with an impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang.  I was as sure as if I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and limber.

I felt utterly humiliated.  Standing there with all eyes upon me I was conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child’s experience—­the pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation.  I thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger.  Then I thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame.  I remembered what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady, and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before all the village children.