He was conscious that the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious of anything arithmetical.

His sensations clogged his intellect; he suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he hated her busy little shoulder blades.
He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived.

She was out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him.

"Pfa!" said Ramsey to himself--or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say which was which.

"Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she ?"...