“Now don’t stay in here, go down and out into the fresh air,” directed Miss Mason, busily putting up all the windows as high as they would go. “Out with you, every one!”
It was warm and sunny on the playground, and Meg was soon drawn into a game of jack-stones with Nina Mills and a little girl from her own class. Bobby wandered off to a corner where a group of boys were gathered. 40
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were bending over something on the ground.
“Don’t be mean,” a boy just back of them said as Bobby came up.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were chums and older than the majority of children in Miss Mason’s room. They had taken two years for the first grade, and gave every evidence of spending two years in the second grade. It wasn’t that they found their lessons difficult, but rather that they didn’t try, and sometimes it almost seemed that they preferred to be bad. They played hooky, and broke all the rules they could, and when they were in school idled their time away, played tricks on the other boys, or else spent hours in the office of the vice-principal awaiting the attention of Mr. Carter, the real principal, of whom even Tim Roon was secretly afraid.
“You keep out of this,” said Tim rudely, as Bobby tried to look over his shoulder.
But Bobby had already seen, and with a quick shove of his foot he kicked away a stone. A small green snake glided rapidly off into the 41 grass. Another snake, mashed and dead, lay in the dust.
“You keep your hands off my things!” shouted Tim Roon. “I got that snake, and if you think you can go round interfering–––”
“Like as not you’ll be bit when that snake grows up; and it’ll serve you right, too,” chimed in Charlie Black, who had red hair and freckles oddly at variance with his name.
Bobby was angry, too, and his small face was as red as the old turkey’s that lived at Brookside Farm.