The Difference

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 201, 26 August 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Difference

"I wonder what she will be like?" asked Vicky for the twentieth time as she sat on the edjre of the schoolroom table swinging her fat legs leisurely. Not one of her three companions could answer the persistent question, for not one of them kneW. The four of them, Vicky, Eric, Pat and Jack, were waiting impatiently in the schoolroom for thoir new governess, whom they had not seen, and who was due to arrive any minute. They were hoping earnestly that she would be far better than the last one, who had indignantly left after .a, long stay of foftr days, much to the children's delight 'tnd their mother's disappointment aira annoyance. She had departed, declaringly injuredlv that she (Miss (Jruinp) had never seen such ill-bred hoodlums in all her born days, which were about 90 years, according to Eric's calculations. Furthermore, she said it was an insult to ask her to stay. Just because they had thought she would like their white mice and had let them, loose in her room, and somehow or another one stray one had crawled into her bed and she had sat on it! She had run screaming from her room, declaring that she detested the creeping, crawling things. The children, only just managing to stifle their laughter,- told her demurely that they thought she would like the deaf little things, for they found them very amusing.

Then there was the time that Jack. Pat and Eric had placed three or four heavy books on top of the schoolroom door, meaning them to fall on Vicky, for

she knew something that they didn't and wouldn't tell. They meant to have their revenge by letting the books fall on Vicky's unsuspecting head when she entered, but it was not Vicky's unsus-

pecting head that the books rained heavily upon, but Miss Grump's, who had come into the room earlier than usual. For half an hour she raged and lectured and threatened to leave, but seeing the children's delight as she told them she was leaving, she decided to stay, for it annoyed her to see thein happy when she was going. When Missi nip heard that a ghost was supposed to haunt the left wing of Langford Grange, the children's home, she laughed and scoffed at the children's belief in it. "There is no such things as ghosts. I don't believe in them," she cried scornfully. "Would you be frightened if you saw one'!" questioned Pat, a mischievous twinkle in her brown eyes. "No!" snapped Miss Qrump. So it was that night that Miss Grump was scared to death by Pat