Whilomville Stories

e greatly. For two days he simply moped, becoming a stranger to all former joys. When his old comrades yell

Persons of his quality never wrote letters to girls. Such was the occupation of mollycoddles and snivellers. He knew that if his acquaintances and friends foun

ng upon his weaker brethren with all the cruel disregard of a grown man. On this particular morning he stayed in the school-room, and with his tongue stuck from the corner of his mouth, and his head twisting in a painful way, he wrote to little Cora,

ectly well how to spell "bird," but in this case he had trans

r the tempest of the play-ground, and there was always that dismal company who were being forcibly deprived of their recess-who were being "kept in." More than one curious eye w

ion, because of her interest in some absurd domestic details concerning her desk. Parenthetically it might be stated that she was in the habit of imagining th

eriously, in a pretentious and often exasperating virtue. It was often too triumphantly clear that they were free of bad habits. However, bad habits is a term here used in a commoner meaning, because it is certainly true that the principal and indeed solitary joy which entered their lonely lives was the joy of talking wickedly and busily about their neighbors. It was al

r mother and a lot of spinsters talk of many things. During these evenings she was never licensed to utter an opinion either one way or the other way. She was then simply a very little girl sitting open-eyed in the gloom, and listening to many things which she often interpreted wrongly. They on their part kept up a kind of a smug-faced pretence of concealing from her

osition than they would understand an ancient tribal sign-language. His face was set in a truer expression of horror than any of the romances describe upon the features of a man flung into a moat, a man shot in the breast with an arrow

ed out sharply. The command penetrated to the middle of an early world struggle. In Jimmie's age there was no particular scruple in the minds of the male se

nlawful, she managed soon to shy through the door and out upon the p

he was allowed by his knowledge of the decencie

ing mind a vision of a hundred children turning from their play under the maple-trees and speeding towards him over the gravel with sudden wild taunts. Upon him drove a yelping demoniac mob, to which his words were futile. He saw in this mob boys that he dimly knew, and his deadly enemies, and his retainers, and his most intimate friends. The virulence of his deadly enemy was no greater than the virulence of his intimate friend. From the outskirts the little i

world, striking out frenziedly in all directions. Boys who could handily whip him, and knew it, backed away from this onslaught. Here was intention-serious intention. They themselves were not in frenzy, and their cooler judgmen

OUT HIM, SHRILLY

a spirit of strife. Jimmie wore a little shirt-waist. It was passing now rapidly into oblivion. He was sobbing, and ther

rmal law which is printed in calf-skin. It smote them into some sort of inaction; even Jimmie was influenced by its potency, al

Jimmie had many admirers. It was not his prowess; it was the soul he had infused into hi

disrepair, and boys in disrepair were always accosted ominously from the throne. Jimmie's march towards his seat was a feat. It was composed partly

fully down at him. "Jim

slike briskness, which really spel

p to th

the entire school-room.

ou've been

an admission of the fact as it was a conc

been fightin

nno',

out in wrath. "You don't kn

at her gloom

ger. "You don't know who you've been fighting?" she demanded,

hat sorrow had fallen upon the house of Trescott. When he took his seat h