smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger
ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking
toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that direction.
At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not yet shown
himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his "yallah dog,"
without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door, and gave
a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which was the
plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went to his
seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were hardly
as red as common, and set pretty sharply.

"Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!"--The master spoke as the captain speaks
to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right under
his lee.

Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a
mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is one
of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard on
him!"

The master stepped into the aisle: The great cur showed his teeth,--and
the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes,
and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep
red gullet.

The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings
commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of
the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be
run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way
after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick