Fanny quickly won their affection and loyalty, but she had to temper her natural gentleness to earn their respect as well. In fact, Fanny’s greatest shortcoming as a teacher was that she had been an extraordinarily docile child herself, for whom obedience and submission were second nature. It never had occurred to her that a girl might bring someone else’s needlework and present it as her own, or another might plead ill-health and a need to visit the outhouse as an excuse to shirk.
Within a fortnight, Fanny was able to rank the girls in order of ability and diligence. She wanted to rearrange the seating in the classroom, so they sat together in small work teams, with the most experienced girls presiding over four or five younger ones. But Mrs. Blodgett would not agree—the ladies’ committee had decided the students would be seated in alphabetical order, the better to call the roll in the morning, and that, accordingly, was that.
The charitable ladies of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor understood that securing the future welfare of the girls comprised more than teaching embroidery, which would merely improve their material well-being. They were obliged to attend to the students’ moral improvement and religious knowledge.
“It would be much better to omit much of the Old Testament,” declared Mrs. Wakefield at one of their regular committee meetings. “Except for the Psalms—but not of course those referring to the situation of David. It would be best to confine the children chiefly to the New Testament, I think. And some other improving works intended for young persons.”
“Oh, indeed, my dear Priscilla,” answered Mrs. Blodgett. “We have agreed to engage Mr. Edifice to read aloud, every morning. A most respectable and worthy young man.”
Therefore they engaged Mr. Edifice to commence each day of instruction with a prayer, to be followed by the reading aloud of improving literature. Mrs. Blodgett urged him to keep the prayer as “short as may be, for the girls cannot be at their sewing while you pray, but they will sit and sew while you read.”
Thereafter, every morning, the students stood next to their work stools with bowed heads while Mr. Edifice prayed over them, enjoining the Almighty to instil their hearts with gratitude and obedience.
Then there was a general clamour and bustle as the girls settled down with their needles and thread. Once order was restored, Mr. Edifice would open his book, stand with his back to the tall windows which filled the room with natural light, and read aloud to them for an hour with the utmost gravity.
“...We are next enjoined, girls, to submit ourselves to all our governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters. By our ‘teachers, spiritual pastors and masters,’ are meant all those who have the care of our education and of our instruction in religion; whom we are to obey, and listen to, with humility and attention, as the means of our advancement in knowledge and religion.
“The lower orders of men have their attention much engrossed by those employments in which the necessities of life engage them; and it is happy that they have. Labour stands in the room of education, and fills up those vacancies of mind, which, in a state of idleness, would be engrossed by vice. It is an undoubted truth that one vice indulged, introduces others; and that each succeeding vice becomes more depraved.”
It was more entertaining than not to have Mr. Edifice’s voice filling the high-ceilinged room, even if some girls didn’t listen and some didn’t understand. They were otherwise commanded to keep strict silence during working hours, enforced with the slap of a ruler on their back from Mrs. Blodgett or Matron, but no admonitions could entirely suppress the collective urge to communicate of four and twenty young persons.
Despite his clerical garb Mr. Edifice was, self-evidently, a man, and he could not appear in the classroom, that place so dominated by the feminine, without setting off waves of whispers and giggles. Most of the students would not pronounce him to be handsome; his face was too cadaverous, and his lips were too thin, but his sallow complexion was thought by many to be pale and interesting.
Before long, the active imaginations of the girls contrived a match between the curate and Miss Price. She seemed born to be a clergyman’s wife, and Mr. Edifice must be in need of one. Further, they observed he would often find some excuse for lingering in the schoolroom after Fanny’s arrival every morning. Whenever she and Mr. Edifice chanced to speak together, there was much grinning and nudging of elbows and suppressed laughter amongst her pupils.
Mr. Edifice’s manner was excessively formal, and he was so alarmed at the thought of saying something indelicate or overfamiliar, that his manners, while privately amusing to Fanny, could not give offence.
“Well, Miss Price, I fear the air has been exceptionally smoky these past few days—I trust you are well? You look very well—that is, you do not look ill—no, that is—but I was alarmed to hear you cough yesterday,” he ventured on one grey morning.
“I am tolerably well, Mr. Edifice, I thank you. Mrs. Butters threatens to send me to the countryside for a few weeks, but I could not imagine deserting my responsibilities here.”
“Your devotion is admirable, Miss Price, but please, do not neglect your health—your friends would agree you must not injure your health, and if I may be so bold as to count myself among your well-wishers—that is, as curate of the parish, your well-being is—that is, a spiritual leader is also...”
“You are all consideration,
