“Come on out. Tod will tell you,” and the two girls joined the others.
“What is it, Tod?” asked Dolly, as she came up to the laughing boy.
“Now, Dollykin, do be real nice and don’t be a horrid old Miss Prim! You see, Miss Partland, the Geometry teacher, is so cross and horrid and unjust to us, we’re going to pay her out. And we’ve thought up the greatest scheme! Just listen!”
“No, let me tell her,” said Joe Collins; “you’ll make it seem worse’n it is. Why, Doll, it’s only this. You see, Miss Partland isn’t looking very well, and we are all going to tell her so. She ought to know the truth. And she keeps a lot of us in every afternoon, and we don’t want her to. So we’re each going to tell her, as we get the chance, that she looks sort of ill, and then, we think she’ll want to go home early, herself, and she won’t stay to keep us in. Isn’t that all right?”
“Why, that doesn’t seem very bad,” said Dolly, dimpling as she smiled. “How are you going to bring it in?”
“Oh, just casually, you know. If you have a chance, you just say, ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Miss Partland?’ or something like that.”
“I’d just as lieve say that, if she looks ill; but I won’t if she doesn’t,” returned Holly, very decidedly.
“All right; you’ll find she looks ill. Why, the poor lady is on the verge of nervous prostration, and so will we all be, if she is so hard on us.”
“Did she keep you in, yesterday?”
“Yep; just ’cause I had a little mite of a mistake in one example! Oh, she’s the limit, she is!”