For a moment he gazed, grief-stricken, at the leathery, viscous remnant in his hand.

Then, with a wrathful exclamation, "Here, then, you can just take it then, you big pig, you!" He seized Jimmie by the neck, and jammed the sticky pie crust on his face, where it stuck like an adhesive plaster.

Jimmie, taken by surprise, and rendered nerveless by the pangs of an accusing conscience, made no resistance, but set up a howl that attracted the attention of the master and the whole company.
"Why, Jimmie!" exclaimed the master, removing the doughy mixture from the little lad's face, "what on earth are you trying to do?
What is wrong, Aleck ?" "He ate my pie," said Aleck, defiantly.
"Ate it?
Well, apparently not.

But never mind, Aleck, we shall get you another pie." "There isn't any more," said Aleck, mournfully; "that was the last piece." "Oh, well, we shall find something else just as good," said the master, going off after one of the big girls; and returning with a doughnut and a peculiarly deadly looking piece of fruit cake, he succeeded in comforting the disappointed and still indignant Aleck.
The afternoon was given to the more serious part of the school work--writing, arithmetic, and spelling, while, for those whose ambitions extended beyond the limits of the public school, the master had begun a Euclid class, which was at once his despair and his pride.

In the Twentieth school of that date there was no waste of the children's time in foolish and fantastic branches of study, in showy exercises and accomplishments, whose display was at once ruinous to the nerves of the visitors, and to the self-respect and modesty of the children.