n't going to let _them_ have a good time either. I wasn't trying to
make them want her. I was trying to get even with them!"

Professor Marshall looked stern. "That is just what I feared, Judith,
and that hateful spirit is the bad thing about the whole business." He
turned to the Principal: "How many girls were going to the picnic?"

The other, with a wide gesture, disavowed any knowledge of the matter.
"Good Heavens! how should I know?"

Sylvia counted rapidly. "Fourteen," she said.

"Well, Mr. Bristol, how would this do for a punishment? Judith has
worked in various ways, digging up dandelions from the lawn, weeding
flower-beds, running errands--you know--all the things children
do--and she has a little more than five dollars in her iron
savings-bank, that she has been saving for more than a year to buy a
collie puppy. Would you be satisfied if she took that money, divided
it into fourteen parts, and took it herself in person to each of the
girls?"

During this proposal Judith's face had taken on an expression of utter
dismay. She looked more childlike, more like her years than at any
moment during the interview. "Oh, _Father_!" she implored him, with a
deep note of entreaty.

He did not look at her, but over her head at the Principal, who was
rising from his chair with every indication of relief on his face."
Nothing could be better," he said. "That will be just right--every one
will be satisfied. And I'll just say for the sake of discipline
that little Judith shan't come back to school till she has done her
penance. Of course she can get it all done before supper-time tonight.
All our families live in the vicinity of the school." He was shaking
Professor Marshall's hand again and edging him towards the door, his
mind once more on his paper, hoping that he might really finish it
before night--if only there were no more interruptions!

His achievement in divining the mental processes of two children
hysterical with excitement, his magnetic taming of those fluttering
little hearts, his inspired avoidance of a fatal false step at
a critical point in the moral life of two human beings in the
making--all this seemed as nothing to him--an incident of the day's
routine already forgotten. He conceived that his real usefulness to
society lay in the reform of arithmetic-teaching in the seventh grade,
and he turned back to his arguments with the ardor of the great
landscape painter who aspires to be a champion at billia