After a pause he asked, "Why ?" Rupert's curls had descended on his eyebrows in heavy discontent.

"It's mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons he's got quit of her and her jackass bo', to hev her prancin' back inter school agin, and rigged out like ez if she'd been to a fire in a milliner's shop." "You shouldn't allow your personal dislikes, Rupert, to provoke you to speak of a fellow-scholar in that way--and a young lady, too," corrected the master dryly.
"The woods is full o' sich feller-scholars and sich young ladies, if yer keer to go a gunning for 'em," said Rupert with dark and slangy significance.

"Ef I'd known she was comin' back I'd"-- he stopped and brought his sunburnt fist against the seam of his trousers with a boyish gesture, "I'd hev jist"-- "What ?" said the master sharply.
"I'd hev played hookey till she left school agin! It moutn't hev bin so long, neither," he added with a mysterious chuckle.
"That will do," said the master peremptorily.

"For the present you'll attend to your duty and try to make Uncle Ben see you're something more than a foolish, prejudiced school-boy, or," he added significantly, "he and I may both repent our agreement.

Let me have a good account of you both when I return." He took his hat from its peg on the wall, and in obedience to a suddenly formed resolution left the school-room to call upon the parents of Cressy McKinstry.