:

"I am sorry," and he looked round the room with a steady, hard
eye--everybody felt that there was a conflict coming--"I am sorry that
any scholar in this school could be so mean"--the word was uttered with
a sharp emphasis, and all the big boys felt sure that there would be a
fight with Bill Means, and perhaps with Bud--"could be so _mean_--as
to--shut up his _brother_ in such a place as that!"

There was a long, derisive laugh. The wit was indifferent, but by one
stroke Ralph had carried the whole school to his side. By the
significant glances of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of
the joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, with just such
a look as Bull would give a puppy, but with the utmost suavity in his
voice, he said:

"William Means, will you be so good as to put this dog out of doors?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: _Aout_ is not the common form of _out_, as it is in certain
rustic New England regions. The vowel is here drawn in this way for
imperative emphasis, and it occurs as a consequence of drawling speech.]

[Footnote 3: "_'Nough said_" is more than enough said for the French
translator, who takes it apparently for a sort of barbarous negative and
renders it, "I don't like to speak to him." I need hardly explain to any
American reader that _enough said_ implies the ending of all discussion
by the acceptance of the proposition or challenge.]

[Footnote 4: _Durn't, daren't, dasent, dursent_, and _don't dast_ are
forms of this variable negative heard in the folk-speech of various
parts of the country. The tenses of this verb seem to have got
hopelessly mixed long ago, even in literary use, and the speech of the
people reflects the historic confusion.]

[Footnote 5: _To take a dare_ is an expression used in senses
diametrically opposed. Its common sense is that of the text. The man who
refuses to accept a challenge is said to take a dare, and there is some
implication of cowardice in the imputation. On the other hand, one who
accepts a challenge is said also to take the dare.]

[Footnote 6: Most bad English was once good English. _Ketch_ was used by
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for _catch_. A New
Hampshire magistrate in the seventeenth century spells it _caitch_, and
probably pronounced it in that way. _Ketch_, a boat, was sometimes
spelled _catch_ by the first American colonists, and the far-fetched
derivation of the word from the Turkish may be one of th