"Tim Roon and Charlie Black. I might have known you would talk," said Miss Mason severely. "I remember you last term. You may each stay after school this afternoon for twenty minutes. You, too, Alice Cray.
I'm surprised at you. And Margaret Blossom--a first-grader, whispering her very first morning. Don't you know it is against the rules to whisper in assembly, Margaret?"
Meg hesitated.
"Stand when you speak," said Miss Mason, who certainly was rather severe in her manner. "Did you or didn't you know you were breaking the rules?"
"I--I--didn't think about the rules," stammered Meg, rising and holding on to her desk with both small hands. "But I didn't know you were going to ask us if we whispered!"
Miss Mason's eyes suddenly crinkled. She was laughing! When she laughed you saw that she really wasn't cross.
"Very well," she said, "we'll forgive you this time. But I will ask this question every morning, so don't whisper again unless you are prepared to take the consequences. Now first-graders, take your copy books."
Meg found her copy book already on her desk, and she was so interested in trying to make a page of letters that would look exactly like those already drawn on the top line that she never looked up when the second grade had their arithmetic lesson at the blackboard. And when the bell rang for recess, she jumped.
"Now don't stay in here, go down and out into the fresh air," directed Miss Mason, busily putting up all the windows as high as they would go. "Out with you, every one!"
It was warm and sunny on the playground, and Meg was soon drawn into a game of jack-stones with Nina Mills and a little girl from her own class. Bobby wandered off to a corner where a group of boys were gathered.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were bending over something on the ground.
"Don't be mean," a boy just back of them said as Bobby came up.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were chums and older than the majority of children in Miss Mason's room. They had taken two years for the first grade, and gave every evidence of spending two years in the second grade. It wasn't that they found their lessons difficult, but rather that they didn't try, and sometimes it almost seemed that they preferred to be bad. They played hooky, and broke all the rules they could, and when they were in school idled their time away, played tricks on the other boys, or else spent hours in the office of the vice-principal awaiting the attention of Mr. Carter, the real principal, of whom even Tim Roon was secretly afraid.
"You keep out of this," said Tim rudely, as Bobby tried to look over his shoulder.
But Bobby had already seen, and with a quick shove of his foot he kicked away a stone. A small green snake glided rapidly off into the grass. Another snake, mashed and dead, lay in the dust.
"You keep your hands off my things!" shouted Tim Roon. "I got that snake, and if you think you can go round interfering----"
"Like as not you'll be bit when that snake grows up; and it'll serve you right, too," chimed in Charlie Black, who had red hair and freckles oddly at variance with his name.
Bobby was angry, too, and his small face was as red as the old turkey's that lived at Brookside Farm.
"If you want to kill a snake, you don't have to mash it and hurt it,"
he told Tim heatedly. "You like to kill things. Water snakes are harmless--Sam Layton says so. You cut up that other snake 'fore you killed it; and you let me find you doing that to a live snake, or anything else that can feel, and I'll, I'll----"
The bell rang then and Bobby didn't have time to say what he would do.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black walked off toward the school building ignoring Bobby, and the other boys followed, looking a little ashamed.
They had watched Tim torture the snake without thinking much about it. If a snake had feelings they had never considered them. And yet they did not mean to be cruel.
Bobby stayed to bury the dead snake. This made him late, and Miss Mason scolded him roundly. Bobby took his seat wishing that he could get even with Tim Roon. That is not a sensible feeling for any one to have, and it never yet made the boy or girl, or grown-up for that matter, who had it, either happy or comfortable.
"I know it is a warm afternoon, and I suppose you find it hard to settle down to work after a summer of play," said Miss Mason, suddenly looking up from the list of spelling words she was dictating to the second grade that afternoon, "but I do not see any excuse for this incessant noise. James Willard, what have you in that bag?"
"Nothing," answered James stolidly.
"Nothing! Nonsense, you couldn't be rattling an empty bag," snapped Miss Mason. "Bring it to me instantly."
James tramped heavily up the aisle and handed the teacher the bag. It was empty.
"Then you've eaten the candy," said Miss Mason suspiciously. "You may stay after school and fill all the inkwells. Now go to your seat."
Meg watched James as he took his seat. While he had been at the desk she had seen Charlie Black lean over--he sat directly behind James--and take something from James' seat. It was a large lump of yellow taffy.
"He can't eat it," thought Meg. "He'll have to wait till after school.
Poor James won't dare say a word."
And James didn't. When he found his candy gone he looked around at Charlie and scowled, for he guessed Charlie had stolen it, but he did not dare complain. Charlie grinned pleasantly at him.
"Charles Black, go to the board," directed Miss Mason half an hour later. "We have just time to go over to-morrow's lesson in multiplication. Take the figures I give you."
Miss Mason looked impatiently at Charlie. He remained in his seat.
"I can't go," he objected when she continued to stare at him. "Can't I do it from here?"
"Certainly not. Go to the board this instant," retorted Miss Mason.
"Charles, do you hear me?"
"I tell you, I can't go," wailed Charlie Black. "I--I won't go!"
Meg gasped. Even Miss Mason looked surprised.
Then she walked over to the door and opened it.
"You may go down to the principal's office," she said coldly. "No boy can remain in my room who refuses to obey me."
Charlie's face was red, and he refused to meet the teacher's eyes.
"I tell you I can't go," he muttered again.
CHAPTER V
ANOTHER SCHOOLROOM
"Charles Black!" ejaculated Miss Mason, "what do you mean by this nonsense? You can't go to the blackboard, and you can't go downstairs.
Are you sick? Why can't you go?"
Charlie half rose from his seat, then sank back.
"I'm stuck fast!" he wailed. "It's the taffy."
The class began to laugh.
"That will do," Miss Mason checked them. "Where did you get this taffy, Charles?"