The darned old thing (although, in truth, she is not old, save in boy eyes and in boy ways)!
Twenty minutes! Darn the—
“You may go now, Johnny.”
She cuts your condemnatory sentence right in the middle; and not finishing it, you hastily throw the geography into your desk, and make for the door. On your way you dart a glance at her, wondering if she knows what names you have been calling her. She smiles at you, and you feel rather sheepish.
After all, you have time for a swim, delightfully prefaced by throwing mud at the whole crowd in ahead of you.
Staying-after-school is a penalty for misdemeanors; for crimes there is “gettin’-sent-home”—not bad at all until you get there, furnishing, as it does, a vacation—and “lickin’s,” which sounds worse than it really is.
“Lickin’s” don’t hurt half the time. Never would a boy admit, outside, that a licking hurt; he “bellered just for fun”! The fact is, lots of the kids declared they had rather take a licking than be kept after school, for a licking was soon over, and then you were through.
But by virtually unanimous vote the kids all asserted that they had rather be licked, any day, or stay after school for a whole month, than “speak.”
It is Friday afternoon—a fateful Friday when sashes and squeaky shoes and slicked hair and significantly arrayed chairs herald “speaking day.” And you are among the elect, as testify your red tie without and your uneasy heart within.
Early the books are put away, and with the clearing of the desks are cleared also the metaphorical decks.