Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre by Miss Read

Christmas, and as it fell conveniently on a Sunday this year I should have a wonderful weekend amidst the luxury of Amy and James's home.
    Meanwhile, I remembered my duty to Mrs Pringle, and hurried across the playground to the school to set about taking down the decorations and putting away some of the Christmas pictures.
    I half expected to hear Mrs Pringle's morose singing as I approached. Instead, I heard her scolding someone, and thought that she might have surprised a child returning to collect something it had forgotten in the excitement of the Christmas party.
    But it was not one of my schoolchildren who was being harangued. A little boy of three or four years was sucking his thumb and gazing at the school cleaner. He did not appear to be at all upset.
    'Ah, Miss Read,' cried Mrs Pringle, 'I'm sorry to be burdened with
this,
today of all days, but our Minnie has had to catch the Caxley, and there was only me to mind this 'un.'
    'The Caxley' is the term used in our downland villages for either the bus which goes to Caxley, as in this case, or for the local newspaper
The Caxley Chronicle.
    'You must have seen it in the
Caxley
,' we say. 'There was a wedding photo in the
Caxley
,' and so on.
    'Our Min's taken the other child to
hospital
,' continued Mrs Pringle, giving full weight and reverence to the last word. 'There was an
accident
!'
    'Oh dear! What happened?'
    Mrs Pringle eyed the little boy who was idly wiping his wet thumb along the edge of my desk.
    'Give over!' bellowed Mrs Pringle, nearly making me jump out of my skin. The child appeared unmoved.
    'I'll give him something to do,' I said hastily, always the teacher, and went to the cupboard for paper and crayons. We settled the child in a distant desk, and I prepared to listen to Mrs Pringle's account.
    For the sake of appearances I took a few drawing pins out of the pictures pinned to the wooden partition, and dropped them back into their tin.
    'That Minnie,' said Mrs Pringle in a wrathful whisper, 'brought these two in first thing this morning with some cock-and-bull story about collecting evergreens and ivy and that for Springbourne church. As if Springbourne hasn't got ivy enough without coming all the way to Fairacre!'
    'Quite,' I said.
    'Well, I'd just put some dried peas to soak for tomorrow's dinner, and before you could say Jack Robinson that dratted first kid of hers had the bowl over and was fiddling about on the floor, getting in everyone's way as we started to pick up the mess. Then what?'
    She stopped dramatically. The silence was split by the sound of an appalling sniff from our visitor. Automatically I handed him a tissue from my permanent store, and returned to Mrs Pringle.
    'We'd hardly got the peas back in the bowl and put fresh water on 'em, when that child started grizzling, and fidgeting with his ear-'ole. D'you know what that little varmint had done?'
    'Stuffed a pea in his ear,' I said, 'it often happens. With beads too, if they are small enough. And I once had a child push a hazelnut up its nose, from the nature table—'
    But my tale was cut short by my fellow storyteller. She disliked having her thunder stolen.

    'One in each ear!'
roared Mrs Pringle. 'And I daresay he would have put more in his nose, and
elsewhere,
if we hadn't caught him. And could we get them out?'
    I guessed correctly that this was only a rhetorical question intended to heighten the dramatic effect.
    'With them being wet, you see,' resumed the lady, 'they was beginning to plump up - the peas, I mean, not his ears - and we tried everything, fingernails, pen knife, even a skewer -'
    I must have shuddered.
    'Well, we had to
try,'
said Mrs Pringle grumpily.
    'Of course, of course.' I began to roll up a picture of a sleigh pulled by reindeer.
    'So I said to Minnie, "It's no good you standing there
hollering. Get on the Caxley with him and cut up to the Casualty. They'll have instruments for getting peas out of ear-'oles." Must be at it daily up there.'
    'The best