"DID you prepare this lesson, Burton?"
Burton, big, athletic, handsome as a movie hero—hesitated a second before he answered. He was busy picking up a pad which lay under his seat.
He deposited the pad on the wide armrest and looked up inquiringly as though he had not fully comprehended the question. Mr. Beaver, the algebra teacher, was smiling his friendly and slightly irritating smile.
"I asked you, Burton," he repeated gently, "whether you had prepared. Did you?"
"Yes, sir," answered Burton.
"Thank you," said Mr. Beaver. He opened a certain terrifying little black book and made a dot in the lower left-hand corner of a certain square opposite the name of Burton. "Perhaps," he added, "you had better go over it again," and smiled the same smile, which would have been sardonic but for the mildness of his tone.
Burton sank glumly back in his seat.
Mr. Beaver regarded his little book studiously for a moment. Then he looked up. The smile was gone. The alert face, adequately adorned by a reddish beard fading into gray, was now solicitous.
"Harrington," he said.
A Fourth Former in the middle row stood up. He was slight and rather pallid, and it was evident that he should begin shaving without further delay, for there was already a shadow of fuzz on his cheeks and chin that made him look unwashed and rather weak. His mother, who was vain, had insisted that he postpone shaving. She could not bear to think that she was the mother of a son who was almost a man, she always said. It made her feel so old.