her, for _once_ in her life, anyway!" Thus it came to be talked about
and understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora
Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the disaster was left vague, but
there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its
ideal opportunity. "You'll see!" said Ramsey. "The time'll come when
that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town before she ever got
appointed monitor of _our_ class! Just you wait!"

They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable
indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey
had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the "various
divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one of the phrases by
means of which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed
auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of
misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a
double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example
of "secondary personality"--a creature fearing nothing and capable
of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb--he was
nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him
distinction.

He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but
the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these
competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough
of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the
great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second
year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A," reverted to an old
fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.