her to save him,
save him!

[Illustration]

The teacher picked up a bottle of ink, the only thing on the table she
could see to throw at Billy. It hit him on one horn and broke, and the
ink began to run down into his eyes. This made Billy angry, so instead
of chasing the boy, he decided to go for the teacher, butt her, grab
the coveted apple from the boy and make his escape. Up on the platform
he leaped, upsetting chairs as he went and overturning the table
behind which the teacher and the boy had taken refuge. Billy shook the
ink out of his eyes, leaped over the table and chairs, grabbed the
apple out of the boy's hand, brushed against the teacher so hard that
he knocked her over, stepped on her and then left the room.

On the way he ran into the principal of the school who had heard all
the commotion and was coming to see what was causing it. Billy, never
slackening his speed, ran straight into him, and landed the principal
on his back, and as his head touched the floor his wig fell off. This
mortified him so he let Billy go, and thought no more about him. All
his effort was to get his wig on straight before any of the young lady
teachers should see him. For he was very vain and he did not wish any
of them to know he wore a wig. But alas! The more he tried to
straighten it, the more it persisted in turning inside out and back
end foremost. And there he sat with his bald head shining like a
billiard ball when a sweet voice said, "I hope you are not hurt, Mr.
Wheeler!" and looking up he saw standing before him the prettiest
teacher in the whole school, the one above all others he would not
have had see him in such a predicament for a whole year's salary.

"Oh, no, not at all, thank you!" he replied, as his nervous fingers
tried to adjust his wig. He jumped to his feet and walked off as
quickly as he could, trusting his wig was on straight. But when he
reached his office and looked in the mirror, he found it was on hind
side before, and the part at the back of his head when it should have
been on top. From that day the boys nicknamed him Baldpate, though
they took very good care that he never heard them call him that.

As for Billy, he found his delicious looking apple had a false heart
and was worm eaten, so he had had all his trouble for nothing and
gotten a nasty spot of black ink on his snow-white whiskers and hair.

"I guess I'll go back to Mr. Noland's and see if Stubby and Button
have returned," he thought