[THE BIG BLAST AT THE STONE QUARRY.]
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
It was Friday afternoon, right in the middle of May, and it seemed as if the wide front door of Prome Centre Academy would never get through letting out just one more squad of boys or girls. It was quite the customary thing for Felix McCue to have to wait a little later than the rest.
Miss Eccles was a faithful teacher, and she had often told Felix what an interest she took in him; but he could have heard it a great deal more thankfully at any other time than just after school, and when he knew the other boys were waiting for him. He knew they were, because he had showed them his slate in the arithmetic class, and they had read on it, in big letters, "Got something to tell you. Big."
He had printed every word of it, and he was glad he had done so now, for if he had not he would have been all alone when he at last got outside of the great door. He did not do that, either, until Miss Eccles had looked him in the face for ten of the longest minutes, and talked to him, with a ruler in one hand and a book in the other.
Felix had listened, and he had said "yessum," very respectfully, every time she mentioned George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, but for all that he was only three seconds in reaching the open air, after she said:
"You may go now, Felix, but I hope you will bring no more bumble-bees into this school-room."
"Yessum," and he was off so quickly that he did not hear Miss Eccles, who was trying hard not to laugh right out, and saying to herself:
"The queer little rogue! To think of his telling me, 'Plaze, mum, thim bees knew just the wans to go for; ye cudn't have picked out betther b'ys to have 'em light on.' And what I'm to do with him puzzles me. He's one of the brightest boys in the whole school."
At that moment Felix was walking away from the academy with a boy of about his own size on either side of him.