"They're awful hard lessons, and surely some one will miss, and I'm just waiting for a chance like that. You know I hate to be foot," he continued, "and if I hadn't 'a' missed that day three weeks ago, I would have been head now."
He had finished his dinner before his mother and little sister, and was off to school while they were yet at the table.
The boys in the play ground had changed their minds about playing base-ball, from the fact that some wanted to begin playing right away, while others wanted to wait for the return of those who had gone home for dinner. Some wanted to choose new sides, and others wanted to remain as they had been the day before; and yet others, as they said, "didn't want to play anyhow," and in the midst of so many voices, they all went to playing "Drop the handkerchief," girls and boys together. Charlie was especially fond of playing "Drop the handkerchief," and when he saw it was that game instead of ball, it did not take long until he was at it with all his might. Adding his kerchief to those already afloat, he ran around the large circle never faster.
Grown up people sometimes wonder how it is that children are willing to play until they are all in a perspiration, but children just as well wonder at grown up people for working with the same result.
The ringing of the school bell brought the game to a close. Nearly all of the scholars went at once into the house, while a few lingered on the porch to get a drink of water and cool off a little before going in.
How quiet it seems just after all the boys and girls are called from the play-ground to their books.
The school building at Ringgold is at one end of the town, and the town is a little, long one, right on the top of a large, long hill. On either side you can see the mountains, and from Ringgold to the mountain eastward, even away up on the side of the mountain, are thousands and thousands of peach trees.
THE RINGGOLD SCHOOLHOUSE.