The robin lady teacher looked very much surprised at the frog boy, but she only said, “Very well, Bawly. Then you can’t go.”
So Bully hurried out, and Bawly and the teacher stayed there.
Bawly kept feeling worse and worse, and he began to wish that he had said he was sorry. He looked at the teacher, and he saw that she was gazing out of the window again, toward the woods, where there were little white flowers, like stars, growing by the cool, green ferns. And Bawly noticed how tired the teacher looked, and as he watched he was sure he saw a tear in each of her bright eyes. And finally she turned to him and said:
“It is so nice out of doors, Bawly, that I can’t keep you here any longer, no matter whether you are sorry or not. But I hope you’ll be sorry to-morrow, and won’t whisper again. For it helps me when boys and girls don’t whisper. Run out now, and have a good time. I wish I could go, but I have some work to do,” and then with her wing she patted Bawly on his little green head, and opened the door for him.
Bawly felt rather queer as he hopped out, and he didn’t feel like playing ball, after all. Instead he hopped off to the woods, and sat down under a big Jack-in-the-pulpit to think. And he thought of how his teacher couldn’t live in the nice green country as he did, for she had to stay in a boarding-house in the city, to be near her school, and she couldn’t see the flowers growing in the woods as often as could Bawly, for she nearly always had to stay in after school to write in the report-books.
“I—I wish I hadn’t whispered,” Bawly said to himself. “I—I’m going to help teacher after this. I’ll tell her I’m sorry, and—and I guess I’ll bring her some flowers for her desk.”
Every one wondered what made Bawly so quiet that evening at home. He studied his lessons, and he didn’t want to go out and play ball with Bully.
“I hope he isn’t going to be sick,” said his mamma, anxious-like.
“Oh! I guess maybe he’s got a touch of water-lily fever,” said Grandpa Croaker. “A few days of swimming will make him all right again.”
Bawly got up very early the next morning, and without telling any one where he was going he hopped over to the woods, and gathered a lot of flowers.