` Well , ' he said finally , ' I ca n't spell it but I know what it means . ' '' ` What ? ' I asked . '' ` St. Clair Donnell 's face , miss . ' `` St. Clair is certainly very much freckled , although I try to prevent the others from commenting on it ... for I was freckled once and well do I remember it . But I do n't think St. Clair minds . It was because Jimmy called him ` St. Clair ' that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from school . I heard of the pounding , but not officially , so I do n't think I 'll take any notice of it . `` Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition . I said , ` If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other , how many would you have altogether ? ' ' A mouthful , ' said Lottie . And in the nature study class , when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads should n't be killed , Benjie Sloane gravely answered , ` Because it would rain the next day . ' `` It 's so hard not to laugh , Stella . I have to save up all my amusement until I get home , and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent cause . She says a man in Grafton went insane once and that was how it began . `` Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a SNAKE ? Rose Bell says he was ... also that William Tyndale WROTE the New Testament . Claude White says a ` glacier ' is a man who puts in window frames ! `` I think the most difficult thing in teaching , as well as the most interesting , is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about things . One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner hour and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves .
I asked them XXXXX tell me the things they most wanted .
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