intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher — the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher’s head — down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still in her possession!

And how the light did blaze abroad from the master’s bald pate — for the signpainter’s boy had gilded it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

NOTE: — The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a Western Lady” — but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.