half closed in an ecstasy, and he did not turn his face toward the
paint-brush pig-tails, nor give any sign that he knew of their owner's
presence. Yet when she passed his desk, his voice did not quaver, nor
his eyes blink, nor his countenance redden, as his foot darted out for
her to trip over. She tripped purposely, thereby accepting affection's
tribute, and he was glad.

To elaborate the tale of how the Pratt girl blundered with Piggy
Pennington's note would be depressing. For it holds in its barbed
meshes a record of one agonizing second in which Piggy saw the folded
paper begin to slip and slide down the incline of his Heart's Desire's
desk, whereon the Pratt girl had dropped it; saw the two girls grab
for it; heard it crash from the seat to the floor with what seemed to
him a deafening roar. Nor is this all that the harrowing tale might
disclose. It might dilate upon the horror that wrenched Piggy's spine
as he watched the teacher's finger crook a signal for the note to be
brought forward. It would be manifestly cruel and clearly unnecessary
to describe the forces which impelled the psychic wave of suggestion
that inundated the school--even to the youth of the "B" class, with
his head under the desk, looking for a pencil--and gave every demon
there gleeful knowledge that the teacher had nabbed a note and would
probably read it aloud. It is enough to submit the plain, but painful,
statement that, when the teacher tapped her pencil for attention, a
red ear, a throbbing red ear, flared out from either side of Piggy
Pennington's Fourth Reader, while not far away a pair of pig-tails
bristled up with rage and humiliation from a desk where a little
girl's head lay buried in her arms. Then the teacher unfolded the
crackling paper and read this note:--

FRIEND MARY.--Did you mean anything