t her."

"Oh, well! then you needn't; but I guess I can guess."

"I guess you can guess all you like," said mamma, smiling again.

"One thing more I remember now that happened during that famous visit,
which was not quite so tragical as the death of the poor kitten."

CHAPTER III

A SCHOOLGIRL'S JOKE

The school to which Helen went--and where Bessie went with her--was
not like the great schoolhouses they have now. It had but two rooms,
one for girls and the other for boys. Some of the school windows
opened on the street, and one morning when all was quiet in the
schoolroom an organ-grinder suddenly began to play under the open
windows.

The girls looked up from their books and listened, the teacher looked
annoyed, but thinking he would soon go on, she waited. The girls began
to get restless; study was at an end; and at last when the grinder had
played all his airs and begun again, the teacher went to the door to
ask him to go. In the hall she met the teacher of the boys, who was on
the same errand, for the boys were all excited and getting very
noisy. In fact school work was stopped in both rooms.

The man refused to move on, and at last gave as his excuse, that he
had been hired by one of the scholars to play there an hour.

The teachers tried to make him tell who had hired him, and finally he
said it was a small boy with red hair. Finding him determined to earn
his money by playing the whole hour, the teachers went back to their
rooms, sure that they knew the culprit and that he should be punished.

There was only one small boy with red hair in the school, and he was
called up and accused of the prank. He declared that he knew nothing
about it,--that he never did it,--and began to cry when the teacher
brought from his desk a long ruler which the boys knew too well, for
when one broke the rules he was punished by being first lectured
before the whole school, and then ordered to hold out his hand and
receive several blows from it.

The poor little red-haired boy cried harder than ever when this
appeared, and again protested that he did not do it. Then a voice
from the back of the room spoke timidly: "Perhaps the girls know
something about it."

This was a new idea; it had not occurred to the master that the man
might have told a falsehood to shield the real culprit, and he laid
down the ruler, telling the sobbing boy that he might go to his seat
while he inquired into it. Meanwhile the organ-grind