the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-slate was
equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of Tuolumne
County) and to the striker; and that the verb "to swot" and the noun
substantive "snoot" were likewise indefensible, and not to be tolerated.
Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own
courage, sat down.

A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking advantage of it,
opened in a higher key, "Tige ith"--but the master's attention was here
diverted by the searching eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of eleven, who
after the fashion of her sex preferred a personal recognition of her
presence before she spoke. Succeeding in catching his eye, she threw
back her long hair from her shoulders with an easy habitual gesture,
rose, and with a faint accession of color said:

"Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. McKinstry told mother
she's comin' back here to school."

The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsistent with his
cynical austerity. Seeing the young girl curiously watching him with
an expectant smile, he regretted it. Cressy McKinstry, who was sixteen
years old, had been one of the pupils he had found at the school when
he first came. But as he had also found that she was there in the
extraordinary attitude of being "engaged" to one Seth Davis, a
fellow-pupil of nineteen, and as most of the courtship was carried on
freely and unceremoniously during school-hours with the full permission
of the master's predecessor, the master had been obliged to point out
to the parents of the devoted couple the embarrassing effects of this
association on the discipline of the school. The result had been the
withdrawal of the lovers, and possibly the good-will of the parents. The