kiss, Lolita. . . . "

One terror still hung over him. If it fell--as it might at any
fatal moment--then the utmost were indeed done upon him; and this
apprehension bathed his soul in night. In his own circle of
congenial age and sex he was, by virtue of superior bitterness and
precocity of speech, a chief--a moral castigator, a satirist of
manners, a creator of stinging nicknames; and many nourished
unhealed grievances which they had little hope of satisfying
against him; those who attempted it invariably departing with more
to avenge than they had brought with them. Let these once know
what Cora knew. . . . The vision was unthinkable!

It was Cora's patent desire to release the hideous item, to spread
the scandal broadcast among his fellows--to ring it from the
school-bells, to send it winging on the hot winds of Hades! The
boys had always liked his yard and the empty stable to play in,
and the devices he now employed to divert their activities
elsewhere were worthy of a great strategist. His energy and an
abnormal ingenuity accomplished incredible things: school had been
in session several weeks and only one boy had come within
conversational distance of Cora;--him Hedrick bore away bodily, in
simulation of resistless high spirits, a brilliant exhibition of
stagecraft.

And then Cora's friend, Mrs. Villard, removed her son Egerton from
the private school he had hitherto attended, and he made his
appearance in Hedrick's class, one morning at the public school.
Hedrick's eye lighted with a savage gleam; timidly the first joy
he had known for a thousand years crept into his grim heart. After
school, Egerton expiated a part of Cora's cruelty. It was a very
small part, and the exploit no more than infinitesimally soothing
to the conqueror, but when Egerton finally got home he was no
sight for a mother.

Thus Hedrick wrought his own doom: Mrs. Villard telephoned to
Cora, and Cora went immediately to see her.

It happened to Hedrick that he was late leaving home the next
morning. His entrance into his classroom was an undeniable
sensation, and within ten minutes the teacher had lost all control
of the school. It became necessary to send for the principal.
Recess was a frantic nightmare for Hedrick, and his homeward
progress at noon a procession of such uproarious screamers as were
his equals in speed. The nethermost depths were reached when an
ignoble pigtailed person he had always trodden upon flat-footed
screamed