Then I met little Kit Seymour, a girl from the south, who had reddish hair, all crimpy, and spoke soft, soft English as if she were breathing what she said at you. She lisped a little, too, was good-looking (though I did not care for that), and did not tell lies--had not been long enough in Breckonside to learn, I expect. At any rate she told me in other words what I had just clouted Dan for. Early the morning before, the school had been astonished to find Mr. Mustard giving Elsie a lesson--when they came to spend a half hour in the playground at marbles and steal-the-bonnets. Their wonder grew greater when, as the bell rang, Elsie was found installed in the little schoolroom, which hitherto had been used chiefly for punishments and doing copybook writing. She was given the infant classes, and had been there all day, so I was told, with Mr. Mustard popping in and out giving her instructions, and smiling like a fusty old hawk that has caught a goldfinch which he fears some one will take away from him. Of course I did not care a button for Mr. Mustard. But he had always been the Enemy of Youth so far as we were concerned. And it gave me a queer feeling, I can tell you, to think of Elsie--my Elsie--teaching alongside that snuffy old badger. He was neither snuffy nor yet very old, but that is the way I felt toward him. Elsie, too--at least she used to. But I could bet it was all the doing of that hook-nosed sister of his--Betty Martin Mustard, we called her, though her name was only Elizabeth, and not Martin at all. Little Kit Seymour kept on lingering. She was smiling mischievously, too, which she had no business to do. And she wouldn't have done it long if she had been a boy. It got sort of irritating after a while, though I wasn't donkey enough to let her see it. I knew better. I just said that I hoped she, Elsie, would like school-teaching, and that my father had always said that was what she should go in for. But Kit went on swinging her green baize bag, like I've seen them do the incense pot in Mr. Ablethorpe's church up at Breckonton. Father would have skinned me alive if he knew I had gone there. He was a Churchman, was father, but death on incense pots, confessions, and all apostolic thingummies, such as Mr. Ablethorpe was just nuts on. He had even stopped going to church at home because our old vicar had said that the Anglican Church was a church catholic. I bet he didn't mean any harm. He was a first-rate old fellow. But my father waited behind and told him out loud that the Church of England is a Protestant church, and "whoever says it isn't is a liar!" That caused a coolness, of course. Yet I believe they both meant the same thing. For our vicar wasn't one of Mr. Ablethorpe's sort, but just wanted to let people alone, and was content if people left him alone. But all things about churches made our Breckonside folk easily mad--being, as I said before, actually on the border-line, or at least very near to it.