"But you shouldn't have come so close before you threw the snowball."
"I know what I'm doing," growled the big boy, running off.
The whack in the ear made that member ache, and Bert did not feel near so full of fun when he entered the schoolyard. Several of his friends came up to him in sympathy.
"Did he hurt you very much, Bert?" asked one.
"He hurt me enough. It wasn't fair to come so close, or to make the snowballs so hard."
"Let us duck Danny in the snow," suggested one of the boys.
This was considered a good plan, but nobody wanted to start in, for, as I have said before, Danny was a good deal of a bully, and could get very rough at times.
While the boys were talking the matter over, the school bell rang and all had to go to their classrooms. In a little while Bert's ear stopped aching, but he did not forget how Danny Rugg had treated him.
"I'll pay him back when we go home to dinner," Bert told himself, and laid his plans accordingly.
As soon as Bert got out of school he hurried into a corner of the yard and made three good, hard snowballs. These he concealed under his overcoat and then waited for Danny to appear.