Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/290

258 all pupils respect a teacher who can make herself as a little child in acknowledging a mistake, and making what reparation for it she can.

But a week had passed, and Phil was as obstinate on one side as his teacher was determined on the other. In vain his father and mother urged and commanded. Angry and smarting from the injustice done him, this  seemed a different Phil from the pleasant,  happy-go-lucky lad they used to know. At length, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, at their wits’  end, begged Bessie to take Phil in hand.

“Oh, dear!” Bess said to her mother, on the evening after this remarkable request. “I do wish people would discipline their own children. The idea of expecting me to succeed where they fail I It is too absurd.”

However, Phil was invited to dine at the Carters’, whither he went somewhat suspiciously, for he regarded this as only a new plot  to entrap him into telling what he had made up  his mind to keep to himself. But Bess was wily. Dinner-time came and went, and no word of the dreaded subject, until Phil began  to think that his had been a false alarm. But by