That fate promised to be a happy one. If Miss Leonard were nice as well as pretty, school might be endurable, was Teddy’s thought, while Harry’s eyes sparkled with delight. He was sure Miss Leonard liked boys. He was even surer when he heard her say, “Boys, we are glad to welcome you to our section. We have just two vacant seats. I think they must have been waiting for you. I will put your names on my register; then you can take your places.”
Stepping over to her desk, she beckoned the two boys to her side and wrote their names on the register. Then she conducted them down the center aisle between the rows of desks to two empty seats, the last two on the last of the four rows of seats, each row of which contained six seats.
“Faces front,” reminded Miss Leonard, gently, as pair after pair of curious eyes were directed toward these latest arrivals. “After classes you may stop and speak to the new members of our school-room family. All ready for your writing lesson, boys. Take out copy books. Remember, we are going to work quickly and quietly.” She walked to the front of the room and faced her class.
Miss Leonard did not raise her voice above an ordinary conversational tone, yet her class obeyed her at once, with the exception of a stout, cross-faced boy who occupied the seat directly across from Teddy in the next section. He was glaring at Teddy as though about to pounce upon him, then as Teddy’s eyes happened to rest on him, he screwed his fat face into a most hideous contortion.
Teddy leaned forward and touched Harry on the shoulder. “Well, if here isn’t the elephant,” he said in a loud whisper. “Dear old Fatty Felix.”
Unluckily, the fat boy’s ears were sharp. He heard the whispered words “elephant” and “Fatty Felix.” His broad face grew very red; then he raised his hand. Before Miss Leonard could ascertain the cause of the upraised hand, he fairly shouted out, “Teacher, he,” pointing a pudgy, accusing forefinger at Teddy, “called me ‘elephant’ an’ ‘Fatty Felix,’ an’ Tuesday he knocked my tray out of my hand in the lunch room and spilled my dinner. He did it apurpose. He wasn’t goin’ to pay for it, neither.”
A tense, little figure, crowned with a mop of red hair launched itself straight at the now maliciously-grinning fat boy. Another second and Teddy’s closed fists would have landed on his tormentor’s body with all the force which an angry little boy can put into blows. Someone caught him and set him down hard in his seat. He raised astonished eyes to Harry’s stern face. “You crazy boy,” hissed Harry. “Now you are in for it!”
“He can’t say I wasn’t goin’ to pay for his old lunch without gettin’ punched,” sputtered Teddy, wriggling from Harry’s grasp.
“Boys, what does this mean?” Miss Leonard’s dimples were not in evidence. She looked uncompromisingly stern, and her eyes sparkled angrily. “Tell me, at once.” The other occupants of the class set up an excited buzzing.