His face was pale, and his black eyes were glittering with fierce fury, and in his heart he was conscious of a wild longing to fall upon Foxy and tear him to pieces.
And Foxy, big and tall as he was, glanced at Hughie's face, and saying not a word, turned and fled to the front of the school where the other boys were.
Hughie followed slowly, his heart still swelling with furious rage, and full of an eager desire to be at Foxy's smiling, fat face.
At the school door stood Miss Morrison, the teacher, smiling down upon Foxy, who was looking up at her with an expression of such sweet innocence that Hughie groaned out between his clenched teeth, "Oh, you red-headed devil, you! Some day I'll make you smile out of the other side of your big, fat mouth." "Who are you swearing at ?" It was Fusie.
"Oh, Fusie," cried Hughie, "let's get Davie and get into the woods.

I'm not going in to-day.

I hate the beastly place, and the whole gang of them." Fusie, the little, harum-scarum French waif was ready for anything in the way of adventure.

To him anything was better than the even monotony of the school routine.

True, it might mean a whipping both from the teacher and from Mrs.McLeod; but as to the teacher's whipping, Fusie was prepared to stand that for a free day in the woods, and as to the other, Fusie declared that Mrs.McLeod's whipping "wouldn't hurt a skeeter." To Davie Scotch, however, playing truant was a serious matter.