Dragonfly grabbed his nose with the red handkerchief and stopped most
of the next sneeze, so only a little tail of it exploded.

The fingers of both Mr. Black's hands were drumming on the desk on
each side of his open Bible, and he had his eyes glued to the page,
although I could tell the way he was staring at the page that he maybe
wasn't reading but only thinking.

It was as quiet, in fact ten times as quiet, as if we were having
school.

A jiffy later, I heard Mr. Black clear his throat and say to us, "It's
been a very exciting afternoon, boys, and I don't feel any too well. I
think I ran too hard to catch Prince." He took a very deep breath, and
sighed, and yawned and leaned back in his chair, without looking
straight at us but just in our direction, just as Little Jim piped up
and said, "Did you catch him? Was he hurt?"

"Circus stopped him," Mr. Black said, "and we put him up in their barn
till he calms down and quits trembling.... You boys want to bring in a
couple of armloads of wood?"

Well, in a few jiffies all of us boys were carrying in wood and
stacking it in the back of the schoolroom where we would have plenty
to keep the schoolhouse nice and warm tomorrow.

I just couldn't figure it out--our not getting any licking, and Mr.
Black reading the Bible and all of a sudden acting very kind. Why,
when we carried in our loads of wood, he acted like he was our very
best friend, and that we not only hadn't done anything wrong, but that
he didn't even _think_ we had. I couldn't understand it, but all the
time Little Jim had a happy grin on his face, while we worked, and he
kept saying, "I thought it would work.... I was pretty sure it would,
and it did."

"_What_ worked!" I said to him, just as he opened the door for me and
I went in with an armload of wood, and he shut the door after me.
Dragonfly and Poetry were out in the woodshed getting another load.

"Oh, something," Little Jim said, and wouldn't tell me, but he
certainly had a cheerful expression on his face.

Pretty soon when we were all done and were getting ready to go home,
Mr. Black stopped us and said, "Wait a minute, boys, I need one more
picture.... You know, next Wednesday night Mrs. Mansfield is going to
give a book review of _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ at the Literary
Society and I've promised to illustrate the story on the screen with
some modern pictures from real life. I ought to have one of a teacher
putting a board on the chimney o