“Can any one explain this?” he again demanded. “I never before saw a dog in so pitiable and unnatural a condition, but as to his being mad—” and he stopped short, nodding his head in great perplexity.
“I guess I saw him first,” piped up the chubby hobbledehoy who had been the first to cry out in terror on the dog’s arrival. “I saw him bolt in through the winder.”
“You did not!” exclaimed another. “He came in through the door.”
“I know it; I only said I saw him bolt in through the winder,” screamed the first speaker, who was blissfully ignorant of syntactical constructions.
“Well?”—
“Well?” mockingly. “Don’t you wish you’d seen him bolt in, too?”
“Oh, you!” furiously.
“Stop that noise!” cried the teacher, authoritatively. “You must say, ‘burst in.’” Then, swelling with pettishness, he said vehemently, “I demand an explanation! Some one must know how and where this originated.”
“I can explain it—mostly,” said Jim (our Jim), stepping forward.
Poor Jim! It had fared hardly with him; for, besides having his weak mind nearly thrown off its balance, he had been clawed and pommelled cruelly in his struggles to escape, and was now suffering with an agonizing attack of his peculiar disease—“the chills.”