The room was very still and quiet.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD WOMAN AGAIN
Several boys and girls seated near Bert had seen him snap the paper cracker. Of course they would never “tell on him,” but they gave him sidelong glances to see if he would accept the “invitation” of the teacher.
“I am waiting,” went on Miss Riker, in a quiet voice. “I want the boy—I don’t think it was one of the girls—I want that boy to come up to my desk.”
The room again became very still and quiet.
And then, slowly, like the little man he was, Bert arose in his seat. He was rather pale, for he realized that he had done a wrong thing. But he was not going to sneak out of it.
“I snapped the cracker, Miss Riker,” he said slowly.
“Oh, Bert! I’m so sorry!” was the teacher’s answer. “Come up here and sit in the front seat. The others go on studying.”
That was Miss Riker’s way. She never punished a pupil at once when rules were broken. She wanted to think over it quietly and have the pupil think of it, so she always asked the boy or girl who had been disobedient to come to the front seat.
Bert knew what this meant. He would be kept in after school, perhaps made to write “disorderly” five hundred times or do some other “punish lesson.” And he was trying so hard for a perfect mark this last month of school! Too bad!