Mr. Schöninger did not tell her that his interest was in her more than in the children, and that he desired to see how she would conduct herself in such circumstances rather than take any note of the persons and acquirements of her pupils. To his mind it was very strange that a lady of her refinement should wish to assume such a work without necessity. His conception of the character of teachers of children was not flattering; he thought a certain vulgarity inseparable from such persons, a positiveness of speech, an oracular tone of voice, and an authoritative air, which the employment conferred on successful teachers, if it did not find them already possessed of. It amused him to fancy these fifty children swarming about Miss Pembroke, like ants about a lily, and it annoyed him to think that she might receive some stain from them. "I like ladies to be charitable," he said to himself, as he went homeward; "but there are kinds of rough work I would prefer they should delegate to others." He was thinking of the physical part of the work; Honora of the spiritual. The school-room was the lower floor of a house at the corner of two streets, and had been used as a shop, the two wide show-windows at either side of the door giving a full light. The upper floors were occupied as a dwelling-house. These windows looked out on a wide and respectable street; but the cross street, beginning fairly enough, deteriorated as it went on toward the Saranac, through the poorest section of the city, and ended in shanties and a dingy wharf where lobsters were perpetually being boiled in large kettles in dingy boats, and crowds of ragged children seemed to be always hanging about, sucking lobster-claws, or on the watch for them. Miss Pembroke's charge were from this class of children, and one of her great difficulties was to keep her school-room from having the fixed odor of a fish-market. The room was severely clean and spotless, and, but that the side-walls were nearly covered with maps, bookcases, and blackboards, would have been glaring white; for the walls and ceiling were white-washed, the wood-work painted white, and the floor scoured white. Two rows of oak-colored benches extended across the room, the backs toward the windows. The sun shone in unobstructed all the afternoon. Only when it began to touch the last row of benches were the green worsted curtains drawn down far enough to keep it within bounds. Miss Pembroke's chair, table, and piano were in the space opposite the door. On the centre of the wall behind her hung a large crucifix, and on a bracket beneath it a marble Child Jesus stretched out his arms to the little ones. On larger brackets to right and left stood an Immaculate Lady and a S. Joseph. They were thus in the midst of the Holy Family.