"Oh, no, sir," replied Patsy ingenuously.
"What is, then?" demanded Moore, baffled.
"Two shillings," announced the graceless youth.
"I 'll give you one," said Moore, suggesting a compromise, but Patsy was not to be so lowered in his price.
"Two is the answer," he replied in a determined tone.
Moore yielded without further protest and produced the money.
"There you are, you murdering blackmailer," said he. "Now get out before I warm your jacket."
Patsy seized his books, and, dodging a cuff aimed at him by his victim, ran out of the schoolhouse with a derisive yell.
"Bessie," said Moore, solemnly, "that little spalpeen will surely come to some bad end."
"And be hanged?" asked the girl, taking a handful of goose-quills from her desk preparatory to sharpening them into pens with an old knife drawn from the same storehouse.