"O-h-h-h-h!" shrieked Peace, beside herself with rage. "You d'serve to have the stuffing whaled out of you for that!"
Flinging aside the treasured roses, she seized the biggest boy by the hair and jerked him mercilessly back and forth across the yard, while he sought in vain to loosen the supple fingers, and bawled loudly for help.
"Teacher, teacher! Miss Curtis, oh teacher!" shouted the excited children; and at these sounds of strife from the playgrounds, the principal and half a dozen of her staff rushed out of the building to quell the riot. But even then Peace did not release her grip on the lad's thick topknot.
Pulled forcibly from her victim by the long-suffering Miss Peyton, she collapsed in the middle of the walk and sobbed convulsively, while the rest of the scholars huddled around in scared silence, eager to see what punishment was to be meted out to this small offender, for it was a great disgrace at Chestnut School to be caught fighting.
The grave-faced principal looked from the pitiful heap of misery at her feet to the blubbering bully who had retreated to a safe distance and stood ruefully rubbing his smarting cranium, minus several tufts of hair; and though inwardly smiling at the spectacle, she demanded sternly, "Peace Greenfield, aren't you ashamed of yourself for fighting Thad—"
"Yes," hiccoughed Peace with amazing promptness and candor; "I'm terribly ashamed to think I touched him—he's so dirty. But I ain't half as ashamed of myself as I am of him."
Even Miss Peyton caught her breath in dismay. But the principal had not forgotten her own childhood days, and being still a girl at heart, and secretly in sympathy with the small maid on the ground, she only said, "Explain yourself, Peace."
"It ain't half as bad for a little girl like me to fight a big bully like him, as it is for a big bully like him to fight a little monkey—"
"I wasn't fighting the monkey," sullenly muttered the boy, hanging his head in shame.
"You were stoning him, and he couldn't hit back, so there!"