Description
Anna of the Five Towns
CHAPTER I
THE KINDLING OF LOVE
The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat,
which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the
children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the
Sunday-school–boys from the right, girls from the left–in two
howling, impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and
formed backwaters until the whole quadrangle was full of clamour and
movement. Many of the scholars carried prize-books bound in vivid
tints, and proudly exhibited these volumes to their companions and to
the teachers, who, tall, languid, and condescending, soon began to
appear amid the restless throng. Near the left-hand door a little girl
of twelve years, dressed in a cream coloured frock, with a wide and
heavy straw hat, stood quietly kicking her foal-like legs against the
wall. She was one of those who had won a prize, and once or twice she
took the treasure from under her arm to glance at its frontispiece with
a vague smile of satisfaction. For a time her bright eyes were fixed
expectantly on the doorway; then they would wander, and she started to
count the windows of the various Connexional buildings which on three
sides enclosed the yard–chapel, school, lecture-hall, and
chapel-keeper’s house. Most of the children had already squeezed
through the narrow iron gate into the street beyond, where a steam-car
was rumbling and clattering up Duck Bank, attended by its immense
shadow. The teachers remained a little behind. Gradually dropping the
pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtuous sensation of duty
accomplished, they forgot the frets and fatigues of the day, and grew
amiably vivacious among themselves. With an instinctive mutual
complacency the two sexes mixed again after separation. Greeti
Product ID: 9781776815807
Sku: 9781776815807
