“Down heaven’s hill a radiant saint
    Comes flying with a palm,
    ‘Are you here, Bridget O’Flaherty?’
    St. Bridget cries, ‘Yes ma’am.’

    “’Oh, teach me, Bridget, the manners, please,
    Of the royal court above.’ 
    ’Sure, honey dear, you’ll aisy learn
    Humility and love.’”

I haven’t time to tell you all about the entertainment, and there is no need.  You, of course, belong to Tens or to needlework guilds or to orders of some kind, and if you are a member of the Order of the Round Table why, of course, you are doing good in some way or other, and good which enables one to combine social enjoyment and a grand frolic; and the making of a purseful of gold and silver for a crippled boy, or an aged widow, or a Sunday-school in Dakota, or a Good Will Farm in Maine, is a splendid kind of good.

This chapter is about cements and rivets.  It is also about the two little schoolmarms.

“Let us take Mrs. Vanderhoven’s pitcher to town when we go to call on the judge with father,” said Amy.  “Perhaps it can be mended.”

“It may be mended, but I do not think it will hold water again.”

“There is a place,” said Amy, “where a patient old German frau, with the tiniest little bits of rivets that you can hardly see, and the stickiest cement you ever did see, repairs broken china.  Archie was going to sell the pitcher.  His mother had said he might.  A lady at the hotel had promised him five dollars for it as a specimen of some old pottery or other.  Then he leaped that hedge, caught his foot, fell, and that was the end of that five dollars, which was to have gone for a new lexicon and I don’t know what else.”

“It was a fortunate break for Archie.  His leg will be as strong as ever, and we’ll make fifty dollars by our show.  I call such a disaster an angel in disguise.”

“Mrs. Vanderhoven cried over the pitcher, though.  She said it had almost broken her heart to let Archie take it out of the house, and she felt it was a judgment on her for being willing to part with it.”

“Every one has some superstition, I think,” said Amy.

Judge Hastings, a tall, soldierly gentleman, with the bearing of a courtier, was delighted with the girls, and brought his three little women in their black frocks to see their new teachers.

“I warn you, young ladies,” he said, “these are spoiled babies.  But they will do anything for those they love, and they will surely love you.  I wish them to be thoroughly taught, especially music and calisthenics.  Can you teach them the latter?”

He fixed his keen, blue eyes on Grace, who colored under the glance, but answered bravely: 

“Yes, Judge, I can teach them physical culture and music, too, but I won’t undertake teaching them to count or to spell.”

“I’ll take charge of that part,” said Amy, fearlessly.

Grace’s salary was fixed at one thousand dollars, Amy’s at five hundred, a year, and Grace was to come to her pupils three hours a day for five days every week, Amy one hour a day for five days.