Phil grinned from ear to ear.
“Oh, it was such a lark! I’d do it again to-morrow if I had the chance. I do love to rile old Higgins! You know who old Higgins is, don’t you?—the under-master next to Steele himself,—a horrid old curmudgeon whom we all detest. Steele is bad enough, but Higgins!—such a name too!—Higgins! It’s enough to put any fellow’s monkey up to be bullied by a creature with a name like that! Well, this is how it was, you know. Steele had to go away for a day or two, and of course Higgins was left boss of the place, and began his usual bullying tricks, keeping us twice as strict as the Doctor does, and giving us twice the punishment we ought to have if ever he caught us at anything.”
“What a horrid creature!” interposed Queenie, with sympathetic indignation.
“So he is; but we weren’t going to be done by him, you bet. I’m not the fellow to sit quiet and be bullied, and there were plenty of fellows ready to join with me. You know, on the 1st of May every year, there is a big fair at Blexbury, three miles away, and of course we’re not allowed to go. It’s long out of bounds, and then a fair’s considered an awful bad sort of place. I’m sure I don’t know why, for there’s nothing but fun, and gingerbread, and merry-go-rounds, and shooting-galleries, and things that couldn’t hurt anybody. Anyhow, of course, we weren’t allowed to go, and of course lots of us do go every year.”
“Do you?”
“Why, to be sure we do; and this year there were to be fireworks in the evening too, and we meant to go twice, first in the afternoon, and then at night. It was a half-holiday, you know,—Saturday,—so nothing could have been better; and old Higgins gave out after morning school that no boy was to go beyond bounds that day, on pain of—I don’t know what—unheard-of penalties.”
Queenie drew a long breath.
“But you went?”
“Of course we went—a dozen of us at least, and old Higgins too, and we dodged him about up and down the fair, and led him such a dance. Oh, didn’t he get wild, and didn’t the people laugh at him! And didn’t the little boys throw mud, and the women tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself, chasing about the lads who only wanted to enjoy themselves and get a little fun. Some of the fellows kept out of sight, but I didn’t care; I let him see me fast enough, and, as he always hated me, he pretended he only saw me, and only really tried to catch me.”
“And did he?”