"
This was the sly Bel's little revenge on Dalgetty, who began confusedly
to explain that it was not he any more than the other trustees, and he
only wished that they had all been here to see, as he had seen, how
finely the school had been managed; but nobody heard what he said, for
above all the humming and buzzing and laughing there came up from the
centre of the school-room a reiterated call of "Sirs!" "Trustees!" "Mr.
Trustee!" "Board!"
It was Archie McLeod, standing up on the backs of two seats, waving a
white paper, and trying frantically to make himself heard. The face of a
man galloping for life and death, coming up at the last second with a
reprieve for one about to be shot, could hardly be fuller of intense
anxiety than was Archie's as he waved his paper and shouted.
Little Bel gazed bewilderingly at him. This was not down on her
programme of the exercises. What could it be?
As soon as partial silence enabled him to speak, Archie proceeded to
read a petition, setting forth, to the respected Board of Trustees, that
the undersigned, boys and girls of the Wissan Bridge School, did hereby
unanimously request that they might have no other teacher than Miss
McDonald, "as long as she lives.
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