The first day of school he marched about the room, pretending to look for a nail in the wall to hang the naughtiest scholar on, whether it was a boy or a girl. Patty was so frightened that her milk-teeth chattered. You little folks who go to pleasant, orderly schools, and receive no heavier punishment than black marks in a book, can't have much idea how she suffered.
She expected every day after this to see a rope come out of Mr. Purple's pocket, and was sure if he hung anybody it would be Patty Lyman. Mr. Purple soon found she was afraid of him, and it gratified him, because he was just the sort of man to like to see little ones tremble before him.
"I tell you what," said Moses, indignantly, "he's all the time picking upon Patty."
And so he was. He often shook her shoulders, twitched her flying hair, or boxed her pretty little ears. Not that he disliked Patty, by any means. I suppose a cat does not dislike a mouse, but only torments it for the sake of seeing it quiver.
Moses was picked upon too; but he did not make much complaint, for the "other fellows" of his age were served in the same way.
As for poor little browbeaten Patty, she went home crying almost every night, and her tender mother was sometimes on the point of saying to her,—
"Dear child, you shall not go another day."
But she did not say it, for good Mrs. Lyman could not bear to make a disturbance. She knew if she should take Patty out of school, other parents would take their children out too; for nobody was at all satisfied with Mr. Purple, and a great many people said they wished the committee had force enough to turn him away.
But there was a storm in the air which nobody dreamed of.
The sun rose one morning just as usual, and Patty started for school at half past eight with the rest of the children. You would have pitied her if you had been there. The tears were dripping from her seven years old eyes like a hail shower. It was very cold, but she didn't mind that much, for she had a yellow blanket round her head and shoulders, and over those boots of Moses's were drawn a pair of big gray stockings, which turned up and flopped at the toes. And it wasn't that ridiculous goosequill in her hair which made her cry either, though I am sure it must have hurt. No; it was the thought of the master, that dreadful man with the ferule and the birch sticks.