eady proportion as his business improved), and had invested more
than two hundred and fifty dollars in a Wall-street savings bank.

With this money at his disposal, Bog might have thrown away the greasy
cap and old coat and trowsers, spotted with paste, in which he pursued
his occupation. But when Bog was at his business, he was not above his
business. And he felt none the less attached to his old clothes because
they were two inches too short in the legs and arms, and pinched him a
little in all directions.

But Bog had a better suit, made of neat gray cloth, which he wore upon
occasions. These occasions happened daily between three and four P.M.
During that interval, it always fell out that Bog had no work to do
which he could not postpone as well as not. And whether it rained or
shone, the occasions brought him, like an inexorable fate, through the
street where Miss Pillbody's school was situated. He would first stride
smartly up the opposite sidewalk, whistling, and cast ardent glances at
the lower windows of Miss Pillbody's school, shaded by green curtains
with gold borders.

After going two blocks in that direction, he would cross the street,
whistling yet, and march boldly up the other sidewalk, past Miss
Pillbody's school, as on an enemy. But if there had been anybody to
watch him closely--as there was not on that thronged street--that body
would have seen that Bog's cheeks began to blush, and his eyes to be
cast down, and his whistle to be fainter, as he hurried by the neat
three-story brick building with the polished doorplate and
handsome curtains.

Then he would loiter for a while in front of McFeeter's grocery, two
corners remote, and gaze from that safe distance with intrepidity upon
the abode of enchantment; after which he would screw his courage up to
the point of marching past the house back and forth again, and would
then resume his position at McFeeter's, and wait until four P.M., or
about that time, when the envied door of Miss Pillbody's establishment
would open, and an angel would dazzle upon his sight, with a music book
in her hand instead of a harp, and a jaunty little chip bonnet on her
head instead of a golden crown. If the harp and crown had suddenly taken
their proper places, and a pair of spangled wings had blossomed right
out of her shoulders, and the radiant creature, thus equipped, had
spread her pinions and soared up to heaven, the boy Bog would hardly
have been surprised. As this an