Even Mrs.Martin felt that nothing she could say at that moment could lift the rebellion into seriousness again.

But Twing was evidently not satisfied.
"Beg Mrs.Martin's pardon, and say you were foolin' with the boys," he said in a low voice.
The discomfited rebel hesitated.
"Say it, or I'll SHOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT IN YOUR POCKETS!" said Twing in a terribly significant aside.
The boy mumbled an apology to Mrs.Martin, scrambled in a blank, hopeless way to his seat, and the brief rebellion ignominiously ended.
But two things struck Mrs.Martin as peculiar.

She overheard the culprit say, with bated breath and evident sincerity, to his comrades: "Hadn't nothing in my hat, anyway!" and one of the infant class was heard to complain, in a deeply-injured way, that the bird's nest was HIS, and had been "stoled" from his desk.

And there still remained the fact for which Twing's undoubted fascination over the children had somewhat prepared her--that at recess the malcontents--one and all--seemed to have forgiven the man who had overcome them, and gathered round him with unmistakable interest.

All this, however, did not blind her to the serious intent of the rebellion, or of Twing's unaccountable assumption of her prerogative.