voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but
was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board
little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward
his seat.

"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
something from the way Dora does it."

The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his
pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet;
and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head
Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over
the attempt.

Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part
in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
hated her busy little shoulder blades.

He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home