teacher and pupil grew.

The boy presently discovered that he could annoy Miss Stone mightily,
and he lost no opportunity to do what he could in this direction. It
was contrary to the creed taught this good woman to inflict corporal
punishment upon any child, and though "Dodd" aggravated her almost to
desperation, and was malicious in his persecutions, yet she kept her
hands off him. Once or twice she tried some slight punishment, such as
making him sit on the platform at her feet, or stand with his face in
the corner, but these light afflictions the boy counted as joyous
rather than grievous, and did as he chose more than ever. He slyly
unfastened one of Miss Stone's shoestrings one day, when seated at her
feet for penalty, and laughed when she tripped in it as she got up; and
somehow or other, he would always put the whole room in a turmoil
whenever placed with his face to the wall.

"Dodd" learned to read quite rapidly, however, having mastered his
letters before he went to school, and having spelled a good many words
on signs and in newspapers. Before the end of the third week he had
read his first reader through, one way or another, though he was still
in the Chart Class, and having once been through the book, it lost
many, if not most, of its charms for him thereafter.

But if his reader was so soon crippled for him, what shall be said of
the work of the Chart Class, over which he went again and again, always
in substantially the same way?

It may be said, and truthfully, that there were some pupils in the
class who, even after going over and over the same lesson, for days and
days, still did not master it, and so the class was not ready to move