—Henry W. Longfellow.
BETTER NOT, BOB!
I
Thud! thud! thud! “Hit him in the eye!” “Knock the pipe out of his mouth!” “Ha! ha! there goes his nose!” “I hit him that time!”
The victim of this piece of cruelty was only a snowman, which the boys of Strappington School had set up in their playground.
But how was Mr. Gregor, who lived next door to the school, to know that it was only a snowman? And what was more natural than that he should peep over the playground wall to see what was going on? And how was little Ralph Ruddy to know that Mr. Gregor was there? And how was he to know that the snowball which was meant for the snowman’s pipe would land itself on Mr. Gregor’s nose?
Oh, the horror that seized upon the school at that dire event, and the dead silence that reigned in that playground! For those were the good old times of long ago, when anything that went wrong was set right with a birch-rod. Little Ralph Ruddy knew only too well what was coming, when he saw the angry man stalk into the schoolhouse and speak to the schoolmaster.