Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying of all.

“And now,” ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit, “what have you been in the habit of studying?”

Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its questioner straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many sphinxes.

Other questions met with an equally disheartening response.  Miss Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a “firm” demeanor.

“Clematis,” said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of the class, “I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you have been doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other.  Now, in your mathematics, for instance, which of you have finished with your arithmetic, and which—­”

“What do you mean?” begged Clematis, somewhat tearful.

“Where are you in your arithmetic?

“Nowhere, ma’am.”

“Do you mean you have never learned any?” Mary Carmichael shuddered as she icily put the question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that the case with all of you?”

Emphatic nods left no room for doubt.

“Then we’ll leave that for the present.  If you will tell me, Clematis, what kind of work you have been doing in your history and English, we will get to work on those to-day.  What books have you been using?”

Not unnaturally, Clematis, who was emotional and easily impressed, began to feel as though she were a criminal.  She sobbed in a helpless, feminine way.  Ben spoke up, fearsomely, from the top of the class.

“We ’ain’t got no books,” said he, in grim rebuke, as though to put an end to a profitless discussion.

“Do you wish me to understand,” quavered Mary, “that you have had no studies—­that you—­can’t read?—­that you—­don’t know—­anything?”

“That’s it,” said Ben, with the nearest approach to cheerfulness he had yet manifested.

Meanwhile there lay on the teacher’s “desk” copies of Clodd’s Childhood of the World, two of that excellent series of History Primers, and The Young Geologist, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary’s ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination.  She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett’s letter had distinctly said that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies.  More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for without doubt it was to be her melancholy fate to conduct this giant band through the alphabet!