d. She was laughing! When she
laughed you saw that she really wasn't cross.

"Very well," she said, "we'll forgive you this time. But I will ask
this question every morning, so don't whisper again unless you are
prepared to take the consequences. Now first-graders, take your copy
books."

Meg found her copy book already on her desk, and she was so interested
in trying to make a page of letters that would look exactly like those
already drawn on the top line that she never looked up when the second
grade had their arithmetic lesson at the blackboard. And when the bell
rang for recess, she jumped.

"Now don't stay in here, go down and out into the fresh air," directed
Miss Mason, busily putting up all the windows as high as they would
go. "Out with you, every one!"

It was warm and sunny on the playground, and Meg was soon drawn into a
game of jack-stones with Nina Mills and a little girl from her own
class. Bobby wandered off to a corner where a group of boys were
gathered.

Tim Roon and Charlie Black were bending over something on the ground.

"Don't be mean," a boy just back of them said as Bobby came up.

Tim Roon and Charlie Black were chums and older than the majority of
children in Miss Mason's room. They had taken two years for the first
grade, and gave every evidence of spending two years in the second
grade. It wasn't that they found their lessons difficult, but rather
that they didn't try, and sometimes it almost seemed that they
preferred to be bad. They played hooky, and broke all the rules they
could, and when they were in school idled their time away, played
tricks on the other boys, or else spent hours in the office of the
vice-principal awaiting the attention of Mr. Carter, the real
principal, of whom even Tim Roon was secretly afraid.

"You keep out of this," said Tim rudely, as Bobby tried to look over
his shoulder.

But Bobby had already seen, and with a quick shove of his foot he
kicked away a stone. A small green snake glided rapidly off into the
grass. Another snake, mashed and dead, lay in the dust.

"You keep your hands off my things!" shouted Tim Roon. "I got that
snake, and if you think you can go round interfering----"

"Like as not you'll be bit when that snake grows up; and it'll serve
you right, too," chimed in Charlie Black, who had red hair and
freckles oddly at variance with his name.

Bobby was angry, too, and his small face was as red as the old
turkey's that lived at Br