CHAPTER II.


As the children were slowly straggling to their places the next morning,
the master waited for an opportunity to speak to Rupert. That beautiful
but scarcely amiable youth was, as usual, surrounded and impeded by a
group of his small female admirers, for whom, it is but just to add,
he had a supreme contempt. Possibly it was this healthy quality that
inclined the master towards him, and it was consequently with some
satisfaction that he overheard fragments of his openly disparaging
comments upon his worshippers.

"There!" to Clarinda Jones, "don't flop! And don't YOU," to Octavia
Dean, "go on breathing over my head like that. If there's anything I
hate it's having a girl breathing round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in
my hair. And YOU too--you're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes,
you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic,
Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if
they're PRETTY" (with infinite scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't
PRETTY. That's all you girls think about--what's PRETTY and what's
curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' at you? Ain't you
ashamed?"

He caught the master's beckoning eye and came forward, slightly abashed,
with a flush of irritation still on his handsome face, and his chestnut
curls slightly rumpled. One, which Octavia had covertly accented by