It was early in Christmas week, and the female officers were doing their best to excite merriment over the decorations. Snow was falling, but the flakes, after hesitating for a moment, thawed into sludge on the surface of the asphalte yard. Seeing Alfred shivering about under the shed, the superintendent sent him to the office for a plan of the school drainage, which had lately been reconstructed on the most sanitary principles. The boy found the plan on the table, under a little brass dog which someone had given the superintendent as a paper-weight.
"A dog!" he said to himself, taking it up carefully. It was a setter with a front paw raised as though it sighted game. Alfred stroked its back and felt its muzzle. Then he pushed it along the polished table, and thought of all the things he could make it do, if only he had it for a bit. He put it down, patted its head again with his cold hand, and took up the plan. But somehow the dog suddenly looked at him with a friendly smile, and seemed to move its tail and silky ears. He caught it up, glanced round, slipped it up his waistcoat, and ran as hard as he could go.
"Thank you my boy," said the superintendent, taking the plan. "You've not been here long, have you?"
"Oh yes, sir, a tremenjus long time!" said Alfred, shaking all over, whilst the dog's paw kept scratching through his shirt.
"My memory isn't what it was," sighed the superintendent to himself, and he thought of the days when he had struggled to learn the name at least of every boy in his charge.
That afternoon Alfred went into school filled with mixed shame, apprehension, and importance, such as Eve might have felt if she could have gone back to a girls' school with the apple. Lessons began with a "combined recitation" from Shakespeare.
"Now," said the teacher, "go on at 'Mercy on me.'"
"'Methinks nobody should be sad but I,'" shouted seventy mouths, opening like one in a unison of sing-song.
"Now, you there!" cried the teacher. "You with your hand up your waistcoat! You're not attending. Go on at 'Only for wantonness.'"
"'By my Christendom,'" Alfred blurted out, almost bringing dog and all to light in his terror: