CHAPTER X.
NEIGHBORS.
The desk next to Johnny’s had been vacant for a long time, and he did not like this much, for he was a sociable boy, and although of course, no great amount of conversation was permitted during school hours, it is something to be able to make faces to a sympathetic desk-mate. There was not an absolute rule against talking in the school which Johnny attended. The teacher had said, at the beginning of the term,—
“Now, boys, I don’t forbid you to speak to each other during school hours, if you have anything really worth saying on your minds, and will speak so that you will not disturb your neighbors, but all long conversations can be saved till school is out, and I hope you will be honorable enough not to talk foolishly, or to take advantage of this permission. If I find it necessary, I shall resort to a rule, so you have the matter in your own hands.”
It had not been found necessary, so far, although the school was full, excepting that one vacant seat next to Johnny’s.
“It may be a coincidence, you know, Tiny,” said Johnny, one day, when he had been lamenting his lonely lot to his sister, “but I don’t know—I have a kind of a sort of an idea that it isn’t.”
“What is a coincidence, anyhow, Johnny?” inquired Tiny, who was never above asking for information.
“It’s two things happening together, accidentally, that look as if they had been done on purpose,” explained Johnny, with the little air of superior wisdom that he always wore when Tiny asked him a question that he could answer. I am afraid he sometimes hunted up one or two long words, to be worked into his next conversation with Tiny, purely for the purpose of explaining to her! It was so pleasant to see her large eyes raised admiringly to his face.
“But why shouldn’t it be a really and truly coincidence, Johnny?” pursued Tiny.
“Oh well, because Mr. Lennox said one day that he thought Harry Conover and I might be shaken up together, and equally divided, to advantage, and Harry’s the quietest boy I ever knew, so it’s pretty plain what he meant by that. And I’ve noticed how he does with the other boys; he finds out where their weak spots are, and then tries to brace them up there, but while he’s trying, he sort of keeps things out of their way that would be likely to make them slip up, and so I s’pose that is what he is doing to me. But it’s very stupid to be all alone, and I wish another boy would come—then he’d have to use that desk, for it’s the only one that’s left.”