Chapter III: The “dog Girl.”

In “Weeks’ Store” was to be found an assortment of wares ranging from potatoes and razors to molasses and ladies’ dress goods. Somewhere within this extensive range was a limited supply of what Mr. Weeks’ advertisement in the _Item_ called, “Youths’, Men’s and Children’s Clothing in Latest Styles at Moderate Prices.” The styles were “late”--about a year late--and the prices were moderate when the lengthy period of credit given to customers is taken into consideration.

Captain Titcomb, exchanging greetings with the half dozen loungers by the stove, whose business there was, as Mr. Weeks himself said, “to swap bad tobacco smoke for heat,” passed to the rear of the store, followed by Bradley. There he proceeded to select an entire outfit for the boy, calculated to clothe him in successive layers, from the skin outward. When the pile of garments on the counter was complete, the captain and Mr. Weeks entered into a lengthy argument concerning price. There was a “Sunday hat” involved in the transaction, and about this piece of headgear the battle raged fiercest.

“It’s too much money, Caleb,” said the Captain, finally. “I guess I’ll try the ‘New York Store.’ Tom Emery’s always treated me fair enough, and I’ll give him a chance. Come on, Brad.”

“I’ll take off a quarter on the suit,” conceded the storekeeper, who was loth to see so much custom go to a rival.

“No,” was the reply. “That ain’t enough to amount to anything. Tell you what I’ll do, Caleb. Throw in that Sunday hat and I’ll take the lot and pay you cash for it, and run my risk of gittin’ the money.”

So the bargain was concluded on that basis. Bradley retired to the back room, and emerged clothed in his new garments and tremendously conscious of the fact. The Captain said he looked so fresh that you could “smell the paint on him.”

“Say, Caleb,” said “Squealer” Wixon, after Captain Titcomb and his protégé had left the premises, “did Ez tell you who that boy was?”

“No, he didn’t. I hinted two or three times, but he wouldn’t say.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. ’Twas the old maids’ boy--Ben Nickerson’s son. Barney said he brought him over in the coach last night.”

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed the chopfallen Mr. Weeks. “Well, if that ain’t enough to---- Ez made me throw in a hat that was wuth a dollar ’n’ a ha’f ’cause he said he’d pay cash for everything and take his chance of gittin’ his money back. And Prissy and Tempy _always_ pay cash for everything. Reg’lar Titcomb trick!”

The loafers about the stove roared with delight.

“Oh, I tell you,” remarked “Squealer,” “you’ve got to keep your weather eye peeled when you’re dealin’ with Cap’n Ez. He’ll have you, head and scales, if you ain’t careful.”

“That’s all right,” grumbled “Bluey” Bacheldor, “but he’ll git fetched up all standin’ some of these days. You can call him smart if you want to, but it’s pretty risky smartness, most folks think. You notice his schooner’s always makin’ ‘record trips,’ and he’s always havin’ presents give him, and all that. How many presents did you have give to you, Cap’n Jabez, when you was runnin’ a coaster?”

“Not a one,” indignantly replied the person addressed, Captain Jabez Bailey. “Not a one. What I got I had to work for.”

It may be that Captain Jabez overworked during his sea experiences. Certainly no one in Orham had known him to do a stroke of work since he retired to live on his wife’s earnings as a dressmaker.

“Well,” commented Captain Eri Hedge, who was not a member of the circle, but had dropped in to buy some tobacco, “I like Cap’n Ez. He does love to git the best of a bargain, and he’s a ‘driver’ on a vessel, and perhaps he likes to shave the law pretty close sometimes. Ez is a reg’lar born gambler for takin’ chances, but I never knew him to do a mean trick.”

“What do you call that game he put up on the old maids?” asked “Squealer.” “You knew ’bout that, didn’t you, Jabez? Seems Prissy and Tempy wanted to sell that little piece of cranb’ry swamp of theirs, ’cause it didn’t pay them to take care of it and keep it in shape. Prissy told Seth Wingate about it and Seth said he didn’t want it, but that he’d give ’em so and so--a fair price, consid’rin’. Well, they was goin’ to sell it to Seth, but Ez comes home ’bout that time, hears of the deal and goes to Prissy and buys it for fifty dollars more’n Seth offered. And inside of three months along comes that Ostable Company and buys all that land for their big swamp. They say Titcomb made more’n a hundred dollars out of that deal. If you don’t think that’s a mean trick, Cap’n Eri, you ask Seth Wingate what he thinks of it.”

“I know about that,” said Captain Eri, calmly; “and I think it was jest another case of Ez’s takin’ chances, that’s all. Seth’s growlin’ is only sour grapes. Ez knew the Ostable folks was talkin’ ’bout layin’ out a big swamp over here some time or other. He jest bought the Allen piece and run his risk. You notice Prissy and Tempy ain’t findin’ no fault. They think he’s the only man in town. Fact is, he _is_ the only man, outside of the minister, that they’ll have any dealin’s with. Queer pairin’ off that is--Ez and the minister!” he chuckled.

“Oh, women’s fools, anyhow,” snorted Captain Jabez, savagely. “Ez Titcomb always could wind ’em ’round his fingers. He’s been next door to keepin’ comp’ny with more girls’n a few in this town sence he was old enough to leave school. But he don’t go fur enough to git engaged or nothin’ like that. Minute there’s any talk that he’s likely to git married to one of ’em, away goes Ez, and that’s the end of _that_ courtin’. And yet, spite of their talk ’bout his bein’ slick, and hints that he’s tricky, they’re always heavin’ up to a feller, ‘How smart Cap’n Titcomb is,’ and ‘Why don’t you make money same as Cap’n Ezry?’ ’Nough to make an honest man sick.”

Captain Eri made his purchases and went home, but the others continued to dissect Ezra Titcomb’s character, and the general opinion seemed to be that he would “bear watchin’.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile the Captain, unconscious of all this, piloted Bradley to the corner of the road upon which the Allen sisters lived, and there left him with a message to the effect that he--the Captain--would call next day. Then he sought his room at the “Traveler’s Rest,” there to read the paper of the day before; while the boy, with his big bundle of old clothes and new “extras,” walked homeward alone.

The Allen house was on the “lower road,” and to reach it you turned the corner just above “Web” Saunders’ billiard room and went on past “Lem” Mullett’s stable, and the Methodist “buryin’ ground”--the sects in Orham cannot, apparently, agree even after they are dead, for each denomination has its separate cemetery--past the late Captain Saunders’ estate and on up the hill overlooking the bay. Bradley had just reached the little house next door to the Allens, when, through the side gate of its yard, there darted a small, ragged-looking dog, barking as if it went by steam. It was followed by a big dog, also barking, and this in turn was followed by another and still another. None of the animals was handsome and none looked as if it was good for much except to bark, but each seemed to feel that it was its special duty to devour the boy before the others got a chance at him. On they came, a noisy procession, growling and snapping.

Bradley put down his bundle and looked about for a stone, but the snow covered the road and there were no stones in sight. He poised himself on one foot and held the other ready for a kick. The dogs formed a circle about him and the racket was blood-curdling.

Out of the gate darted a slim girl in a red dress, brandishing a broom.

“They won’t hurt you!” she screamed, running to the rescue. “Stop it, Peter! Be quiet, Rags! Go home, Tuesday! Winfield, I’ll give it to _you_!”

The dogs dodged the broom and retired to a safe distance, wagging their tails and doing their best to indicate that they were only making believe, anyhow. “Winfield,” the small dog that had led the attack, was the most persistent, and he snapped at the broom in high glee, evidently considering that it was waved for his particular amusement.

“They got away before I could stop ’em,” panted the girl. “Grandma’s gone to the store and I went out in the woodshed to play with ’em, and they bounced out of the door first thing. They don’t mean anything; they’re just full of it, that’s all.”

“I wasn’t scared,” said Bradley. “I didn’t believe they’d bite. I like dogs.”

“Do you?” said the girl, eagerly. “So do I. Grandma says she does, too, in moderation. The old maids don’t, though. Oh, I forgot. You’re the old maids’ boy, ain’t you? I saw you out in their yard with Miss Prissy this mornin’.”

“Yes, I saw you, too. You live in here, don’t you?”

“Um-hum. Oh, my goodness! I haven’t got any rubbers on, and grandma said if I got my feet wet to-day she didn’t know but she’d skin me. I must go right back and dry ’em before she comes. I’ve had a cold; that’s why I ain’t to school. How’ll I ever get these dogs in?”

“I’ll help you if you want me to,” volunteered Bradley.

“Will you? That’s splendid. Come on!”

Bradley carried his bundle to the back steps of the little house and then returned to assist at the dogcatching. It wasn’t an easy operation, but a tin dish, scientifically rattled by his new acquaintance, tempted all but the wary “Winfield,” and a bone finally decoyed the latter inside the woodshed, and the door was slammed and bolted upon the humbugged pack.

“There!” exclaimed the girl, “that’s all right. I hope grandma won’t notice the tracks in the snow. If she’s only forgot her glasses it’s all right. Now come into the kitchen till I put my feet in the oven. What’s your name?”

“Bradley Nickerson. Most folks call me Brad.”

“That’s a good name. My last name’s Baker. I hate my first one--it’s Augusta. Ain’t that the _worst_? Grandma calls me ‘Gusty.’ Ugh! You can call me ‘Gus’ if you want to; it sounds more like a boy’s name. I wish I was a boy.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because a boy can do things, and doesn’t have to be ‘ladylike.’ If I was a boy nobody would think it was funny for me to like dogs, and I could have as many as I wanted.”

“I should think you had a good many now. Where did you get ’em all?”

“Oh, just found ’em. Rags came here one day himself. I call him Rags because he looks as if he was all ravellin’s. And Peter, the blacksmith gave to me. Said I could have him if I’d get him out of _his_ sight. He sort of named himself. And Tuesday was named that because I found him on Tuesday when I was on a picnic over to East Harniss. And Winfield--he’s the newest one--came on Cap’n Burgess’ fishing schooner and nobody wanted him, so they gave him to me. I named him Winfield because his face looks like our school-teacher--Winfield Scott Daniels; hateful old thing! Wouldn’t he be mad if he knew I named a dog after him! You’re goin’ to school, ain’t you?”

“I s’pose so. They haven’t said anything about it yet.”

“I hope you will. You’ll be upstairs, of course.”

“Upstairs” means, in Orham, the grammar and higher grades. “Downstairs” is the primary department. Bradley answered that he supposed he should be “upstairs.” He was just beginning to go “upstairs” in Wellmouth.

“How do you like the old maids--Miss Prissy and Tempy, I mean. Ain’t they awful strict?”

“I don’t know; I haven’t been with ’em long enough to find out. They’re mighty clean, ain’t they?”

“Oh, dreadful! And they don’t like a noise and they don’t like dogs and they don’t like me. They call me the ‘dog girl’; I heard ’em. One time I went in there for grandma, and Tuesday and Peter followed me and, first thing you know, they tracked mud all over the dinin’-room. My! but wasn’t Miss Prissy mad! But you just ought to have seen that floor,” she chuckled.

Bradley thought of the spotless oilcloth and appreciated the situation. In the course of the conversation that followed, he learned that Gus was an orphan like himself, and that she lived there alone with her grandmother. Suddenly the girl snatched her steaming shoes out of the oven to run to the window.

“I thought I heard the gate shut,” she exclaimed. “Yes, it’s grandma. P’raps you’d better dodge out of the other door. She’ll ask questions and find out about my feet if you don’t. Good-by; p’raps I’ll see you at school to-morrow.”

Bradley picked up his bundle--he had brought it in with him--and slipped out of the side door, presenting himself, a moment later, in the glory of his new clothes, to the critical gaze of the “old maids.”

And it _was_ critical. For the next twenty minutes the boy sympathized with the wooden gentleman with the beautiful painted mustache whose business it was to stand before the “general store” at Wellmouth, with a placard attached to his coat bearing the words, “This style $8.50.” He stood in the centre of the dining-room while the sisters walked in a circle about him and verbally picked him to pieces, bit by bit. Miss Prissy’s final verdict was that the garments were “real neat and sensible.” Miss Tempy was not so enthusiastic.

“They are nice and neat,” she said, “but don’t you think they might be a little more stylish? Blue’s a nice solid color for the jacket, but if he had some diff’rent pants, seems to me ’twould set it off more. You remember those plaid pants of father’s, don’t you, Prissy? Still, I s’pose the Cap’n knows best.”

“Of course he does,” replied her sister, crisply. “There isn’t a nicer-dressed man than Cap’n Titcomb around--that is, except the doctor and Mr. Langworthy, and they _have_ to wear Sunday clothes all the time. Besides, we can make over some of father’s things for him, by and by, if we want to.”

So Miss Tempy expressed herself as satisfied. As a final aristocratic touch, she brought from the trunk in the garret a large-figured silk handkerchief which, tucked carefully into the breast pocket of Bradley’s jacket, with the corner artistically draped outside, was pronounced “just the thing.”

At half-past four that afternoon the sisters convoyed the new member of their household to the boarding place of the school-teacher, Mr. Daniels, in order to arrange for the boy’s entering school next day.

This expedition was a very formal affair. Both of the ladies were arrayed in their best, with bonnets that were the height of fashion ten years before, and “dolmans” that Miss Tempy “made over” religiously each fall. Miss Prissy, the business manager, inspected every window and door to be sure they were locked, and she carried with her a large carpet-bag--much like Bradley’s--the sole contents of which were three extra handkerchiefs, the back-door key and the wallet with the leather strap. Mr. Daniels received them graciously, and condescended to say that he should expect the new pupil the following morning.

When Bradley started for school the next day his head was ringing with instructions from the “old maids” concerning his behavior and attention to his studies.

“Now be a good boy, Bradley,” said Miss Prissy.

“Yes, Bradley,” said Miss Tempy. “Remember, we expect a great deal of you. All our people have been smart scholars.”

Just as he turned into the “main road,” he heard someone calling, and turned to see his acquaintance of yesterday, the girl next door, running to catch up, her hood slipped back from her hair and a dented tin pail in her hand. Being a girl, Gus carried her noon luncheon during the winter months, instead of coming home to eat it.

“Oh!” she panted, “I’m all out of breath. I saw you go past the house and knew you was goin’ to school, so I just fairly flew after you. You’re goin’ upstairs, aren’t you? Did you see old Daniels?”

“Yes, I saw him. He’s a cross-lookin’ chap. Is he strict?”

“You bet he is! Give you checks if you whisper, and ten checks means stay in recess for a week. I’ve only got five so far. Don’t you think he looks like Winfield--my dog, I mean? I had _such_ a time with that dog just now. He was following me and I had to drive him back. He went under the shed and hid, but goodness knows how long he’ll stay there.”

On the way to school they met another girl whom Gus introduced as Clara Hopkins, a “chum” of hers. “She’s tip-top; I sit with her. She’s got ’most as many checks as I have,” was her recommendation.

“Upstairs” at the schoolhouse was a large room with rows of double desks on each side and a wide aisle in the centre. One side of the aisle was the “girls’ side,” and the other was for the boys. Mr. Daniels stiffly shook hands with the new scholar, asked him some questions concerning his progress in his studies, and showed him where he should sit. The more advanced pupils occupied the desks at the rear of the room, and the younger ones--Bradley among them--sat in front. Bradley’s seat mate was an older boy than he, rather good-looking, with curly hair. His name, so he whispered before school began, was Sam Hammond.

“We will come to order,” commanded Mr. Daniels, with dignity. “Position!”

Each scholar folded his or her arms and sat back in the seat.

“I will read,” said the teacher, “from the Scriptures.”

He did so, concluding as follows: “Amen. Second class in spelling.”

The second class in spelling took its place upon the settees at the rear of the room and proceeded to spell words as given out by Mr. Daniels, following each spelling by a definition and a sentence containing the word. One tall, gawky chap with red hair was given the word “Aspire.”

“Aspire,” he shouted. “A-s-p-i-r-e, Aspire--to aim. The man will aspire the gun at the bird.”

The school tittered, and Mr. Daniels pounded his desk with the ruler. “Ye-es,” he drawled, with withering sarcasm, “that is delightful. What a shock for the bird!”

“It said it meant ‘to aim high’ in the dictionary,” protested the red-haired one.

“The dictionary is intended to be used by human beings, not calves,” was the crushing reply. “Sit down, Bossy.”

The tall boy sat down with alacrity, while the school shouted at the official joke.

“Bossy!” whispered Bradley’s seat mate. “That’s Tim Bloomer. Ain’t he a sculpin?”

“Samuel Hammond,” observed Mr. Daniels, “two checks for whispering.”

At recess Bradley went out on the playground for a little while, but he felt rather lonesome among so many strangers, and so returned to the schoolroom. It was empty, the teacher taking his customary “constitutional” in the yard. After a few minutes Gus came bounding in.

“Why, Brad!” she exclaimed, “where’ve you been? I’ve been lookin’ for you. Why didn’t you come on out?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the boy. “I don’t know any of the fellers yet.”

“Well, you’re _goin’_ to know ’em. Oh, my goodness! _Winfield!_”

The stub-tailed dog sat panting at her feet, three inches of red tongue hanging from its mouth.

“You naughty, naughty dog!” cried Gus, almost in tears. “How dare you! Go home this minute!”

“Go home, Winfield!” commanded Bradley, coming to the rescue.

Winfield had gone home by the shed route, already that morning, and didn’t propose to do it again. When his mistress tried to catch him, he retreated to a safe distance and wagged his tail.

“Oh, what _shall_ we do?” wailed Gus. “Recess is ’most over, and if Mr. Daniels finds him here, I don’t know what’ll happen!”

Bradley made a dash at the dog and the latter started on the run about the room. At length they drove him out the “boys’ door” only to have him reappear through the “girls’ door” at the other side. Finally, being penned in with both doors shut and thoroughly frightened, he dashed into the closet which was between the doors, and hid behind the woodbox.

“Now,” said Gus, exultantly, “you watch that he don’t get out, and I’ll crawl in after him. Oh, my goodness! there’s Mr. Daniels comin’ now.”

The cowhide boots of the teacher were heard on the stairs. Bradley, in desperation, shut the closet door upon the imprisoned Winfield. Mr. Daniels stepped to the rope in the entry and gave it a pull. The bell above responded with a single note, and the scholars began to pour up the stairs.

“We will come to order,” commanded the teacher. Bradley, glancing across the aisle at Gus, saw that she was as white as the whitewashed wall.

“First class in arithmetic,” said Mr. Daniels, and then, from the closet, came a long, dismal whine. The “first class in arithmetic” stopped in its tracks and looked aghast. The whole school--with two exceptions--pricked up its ears. The exceptions trembled.

“Ow-wow-wow!” came from the closet. Mr. Daniels strode across the floor and opened the door.

“Whose dog is this?” he demanded, sternly.

No one answered.

“Come out of that!” commanded the teacher, savagely. He reached behind the woodbox and, seizing the cowering Winfield by the “scruff” of the neck, tossed him into the room. “Whose dog is this?” he repeated.

Most of the scholars knew whose dog it was, but none of them told.

“I asked a question!” thundered the master. “Who put that--that creature in the closet?”

Bradley looked at his fellow-conspirator. Then he held up his hand. “I did,” he said.

Mr. Daniels’ mouth opened in surprise. New pupils did not usually begin in this way.

“_You_ did?” he gasped.

“Yes, sir. He fol---- I mean he came into the room when ’twas recess, and we--I tried to put him out and he wouldn’t go.”

“So you shut him in the closet. Brilliant youth! As this is your first day here, I suppose I must stretch a point and believe it was not done on purpose. If it had been any other of the scholars, I should have made an example of ’em. I am surprised that you should treat your little brother” (appreciative titter from the school) “in such a manner. You may put him out.”

It was easy enough to command, but not so easy to do. The dog, frightened at the crowd, backed away when Bradley approached.

“Come here, Winfield,” said the boy, his face a bright crimson. The school giggled at the name.

“Winfield?” repeated Mr. Daniels. “Why that name, if you please?”

“I--I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“No, sir.” And then the boy had a happy thought. “He’s named after Gen’ral Hancock, I guess.”

General Winfield Scott Hancock, in his rôle of statesman, was very much in the public eye just at this time.

Mr. Daniels hesitated. He more than suspected the dog’s real namesake, but he wasn’t sure, and, being a weak man, was afraid of making a mistake.

“Well, put the creature out!” he snarled, and then, losing his temper and aiming a kick at the dog, he commanded, “Git out, you brute!”

That kick was a mistake. Winfield wasn’t used to kicks, and this one scattered his doggish senses completely. He started on a panicky, yelping flight, hotly pursued by Bradley. Down the aisle by the “boys’ side,” across the back of the room amongst the feet of the “first class in arithmetic” and up the aisle by the “girls’ side” sped the chase. At the end of the second lap the entire school was in an uproar.

Mr. Daniels, white with rage, took a hand in the pursuit and his efforts and those of two or three more volunteers only made matters worse.

At length the dog, hemmed in on both sides, hesitated in the middle of the broad aisle. Suddenly he darted toward the closet once more. Mr. Daniels leaped to intercept him, tripped, struck the stool upon which the bucket of drinking water was placed and sprawled upon the floor in the centre of a miniature flood, while Winfield, leaping over him, darted through the entry and down the stairs, a shrieking maniac.

The dripping Mr. Daniels was physically cool, but mentally very warm indeed. “Checks” were distributed with liberality and two boys were “feruled” before twelve o’clock came. One of these sufferers was Bradley’s seat mate, Sam Hammond.

Bradley went home alone. When the “old maids” asked him innumerable questions concerning how he “got along” at school, he simply answered “All right” and gave no details. Miss Tempy was somewhat worried at his silence and confided to her sister the fear that he had been “studyin’ too hard.” “All our people have been dreadful keen students,” she said.

It was nearly one o’clock when the boy re-entered the schoolyard. As he did so a shout went up from a group near the fence.

“Here he is!” yelled one of the older boys. “Here’s your beau, Gus. He won’t let ’em plague his girl, you bet!”

“No,” shouted Sam Hammond. “’Gusty’s all right now, ain’t she? He’ll take care of her.”

“’Gusty had a little dog,
It’s fleece was black’s a crow----”

“You shut up!” screamed Gus, breaking from the circle, and stamping her foot savagely. Her face was red and there were tears in her eyes.

“It followed her to school one day,” continued the tormentor.

“What’s the matter, Gus?” asked Bradley, coming up.

“Haw, haw!” laughed Sam, gleefully. “I told you so. Bradley’ll take care of her.”

“Bradley Nickerson, so they say,
Goes a-courtin’ night and day;
Sword and pistol by his side,
And ’Gusty Baker’ll be his bride.”

“What’s the matter, Gus?” he added, mockingly.

“What _is_ the matter?” repeated Bradley.

“None of your bus’ness!” snapped Gus, who was in no mood to be friendly with any one. “You jest wait, Sam Hammond! I’ll fix _you_! Got whipped in school! Ha, ha! Cry baby!” And she gave an exaggerated imitation of her enemy’s facial contortions during the “feruling” that morning.

“Come on, Gus,” interposed Clara Hopkins. “He isn’t worth talkin’ to. Come on, I’ve got somethin’ to show you.”

Gus reluctantly suffered herself to be led away amid the derisive hootings of Sam and his friends.

“Ain’t you goin’ with her?” asked Sam, provokingly. “She wants her Braddy, so’s to take care of her if Winfield comes to school again.”

Bradley’s temper was slow to rise, but it was rising now.

“Who are you talkin’ to?” he demanded.

“You. Who do you s’pose?”

“Well, you’d better shut up.”

“_I_ had? S’pose I don’t want to?”

“Then I’ll make you--that’s what!”

“_You_ will?”

“Yes, I will.”

“You ain’t the size. Takes a man, not a monkey.”

“I’ll show you whether I’m the size or not.”

“_You_ will?”

“Aw, gee!” said one of the bigger boys. “I wouldn’t take that from no Wellmouth kid, if I was you, Sam.”

“Nor I, neither,” said another.

Thus encouraged, Sam bristled up to his opponent and looked down at him sneeringly. Bradley didn’t give way an inch, and the two boys rubbed jackets as they moved slowly about each other. The surrounding group looked delightedly expectant.

“Stop your shovin’!” commanded Sam, giving his enemy a push with his shoulder.

“Stop yourself,” said Bradley, pushing back.

“I’ll put a head on you so’s the old maids won’t know you.”

“I’ll make you snivel worse’n you did in school this mornin’.”

“Well, Sam!” exclaimed a spectator, in huge disgust; “’fore I’d take that!”

The Hammond boy did not really want to fight, but, thus goaded, he suddenly gave Bradley a violent push with both hands. The next instant both youngsters were clasped tightly together, gripping each other about the neck and wrestling savagely. In a moment they fell with a thump and rolled over and over, pounding, kicking and scratching. The snow flew and the crowd whooped and pushed and strained to see better.

Then there was a rush, a frightened scurry, and both combatants were pulled apart and jerked to their feet, while Mr. Daniels, holding each by the coat collar, glared down upon them.

“You may come with me,” he said, with chilling calmness.

The scene in the schoolroom that followed was brief but exciting. Bradley held out his hand and bit his lip stubbornly while the ferule descended--once--twice--twelve times.

“There!” said the teacher. “Now you may take your seat. For a new scholar you begin extremely well. Now, Samuel!”

The Hammond hand having received its share of beating, and its owner also sent to his seat, Mr. Daniels said: “Both of you will lose your afternoon recess. I shall also give each of you a note, telling of your punishment, to take home.”

At half-past four that afternoon, Bradley, with the note tightly clasped in his hand, walked dismally up the walk to the Allen back door. The thought that he had disgraced himself forever in the eyes of his protectors burned like a fire under his new cap. Also, there was a bitter feeling that Gus, the cause of all his trouble, had not been near him to console or ask pardon.

It was typical of the boy that he had not thought of destroying the note. He handed it to Miss Prissy the moment he opened the door. She read it and sat heavily down in the chintz rocker.

“My soul and body!” she wailed. “Tempy Allen, come here this minute! Here! for mercy’s sake read this!”

Miss Tempy’s agitation was even more marked than that of her sister.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she cried, waving the condemning sheet of paper like a distress signal. “How could you! how _could_ you! I don’t b’lieve a relation of the Allens was ever whipped in school before. What _shall_ we do, Prissy. And his first day, too!”

Bradley, with direful thoughts of self-destruction in his mind, twisted his new cap into a ball, but said nothing.

“He says you were fightin’ and there was somethin’ else,” said Miss Prissy. “Tell the whole story now, every word.”

The boy began slowly. He told of shutting the dog in the closet, but was interrupted by the older sister, who demanded to know whose dog it was.

“Whose was it?” she asked. “Why don’t you answer? Don’t you know?”

“Yes’m.”

“Then whose was it?”

Bradley shifted his feet uneasily on the mat.

“I ain’t goin’ to tell,” he muttered, sullenly.

“Ain’t goin’ to _tell_? Why, I nev----”

She was interrupted. The door behind Bradley flew open and Gus appeared, tearful but determined.

“Miss Prissy and Miss Tempy,” she began, “don’t you scold Bradley! Don’t you now, a bit. It was all my fault, every mite of it. Oh, dear, dear!”

And with sobs and amid the ejaculations of the astonished sisters, she told the whole story, omitting nothing and sparing herself not the least. When the recital was finished, Miss Prissy was the first to comment upon it.

“Well!” she exclaimed. “This is the most--I never did---- There, Tempy! if this ain’t a lesson in keepin’ bad comp’ny, then _I_ don’t know. Augusty, you’d better go home, I think.”

Gus looked at Bradley appealingly, then at the sisters, and, with another burst of sobs, flung herself out of the door and slammed it behind her.

“That awful dog girl!” sputtered Miss Tempy. “I knew what she was from the time she spoiled this very floor with her dreadful critters. Bradley Nickerson, don’t you _ever_ speak to her again. Now promise.”

But that promise the boy would not make, although the argument lasted for an hour, and ended in his being sent to his room without his supper.

“It looks to me,” said Miss Prissy that night, “as if we’d got about as much on our hands as you and me could handle, Tempy.”

“It certainly does,” agreed her sister, nervously. “I think it’s our duty to ask Cap’n Titcomb’s advice right off.”