Just then a whistle shrieked. “Good Lord,” said Old Hundred, “there's one of those infernal trolleys! It must go right up the turnpike, past Sandy.”
“Let's take it!” I cried.
He looked at me savagely. “We'll walk!” he said.
“But it's miles and miles,” I remonstrated.
“Nevertheless,” said he, “we'll walk.”
It was difficult to find the short cut in this tangle of slaughtered forest, but we got back to the road finally, coming out by the school-house. At least, we came out by a little shallow hole in the ground, half filled with poison-ivy and fire-weed, and ringed by a few stones. We paused sadly by the ruins.
“I suppose the trolly takes the kids into the village now,” said I. “Centralization, you know.”
“There used to be a great stove in one corner, and the pipe went all across the room,” Old Hundred was saying, as if to himself. “If you sat near it, you baked; if you didn't, you froze. Do you remember Miss Campbell? What was it we used to sing about her? Oh, yes—
Three little mice ran up the stairs
To hear Biddy Campbell say her prayers;
And when they heard her say Amen,
The three little mice ran down again.
And, gee but you were the punk speller! Remember how there was always a spelling match Friday afternoons? I'll never forget the day you fell down on 'nausea.' You'd lasted pretty well that day, for you; everybody'd gone down but you and Myrtie Swett and me and one or two more. But when Biddy Campbell put that word up to you, you looked it, if you couldn't spell it!”