ginning to dance again.

"Don't you fool yourself!" exclaimed Agnes, for Tess was crying frankly,
and Dot had a finger in her mouth. "Don't you fool yourself, Sammy
Pinkney! They'll have plenty of time to find a substitute teacher before
school opens on Monday."

"Oh, they _won't_!" wailed the boy.

"Yes they will. And I hope it will be somebody a good deal worse than
Miss Pepperill. So there!"

"Oh, but there _ain't_ nobody worse," said Sammy, with conviction, while
Tess looked at her older sister with tearful surprise.

"Why, Aggie!" she said sorrowfully. "I hope you don't mean that. 'Cause
I've got to go to school Monday as well as Sammy."

Tess was really much disturbed over the news of Miss Pepperill's injury.
She would not wait for luncheon but went straight over to the house
where her teacher boarded, and inquired for her.

The red-haired, sharp-tongued lady was really quite badly hurt. There
was a compound fracture of the leg, and Dr. Forsyth feared some injury
to the brain, for Miss Pepperill's head was seriously cut. Tess learned
that they had been obliged to shave off all the teacher's red, red hair!

"And that's awful!" she told Dot, on her return. "For goodness only
knows what color it will be when it grows out again. Miss Lippit (she's
the landlady where Miss Pepperill boards) showed it to me. And it's
beautiful, long, long hair."

"Mebbe it will come out like Mrs. MacCall's--pepper-and-salt color,"
said Dot, reflectively. "We haven't got a pepper-and-salt teacher in
school, have we?"

Such light reflections as this did not please Tess. She really forgot to
repeat the part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, in her anxiety about the
injured Miss Pepperill.

At two o'clock the big rehearsal was called.

"I don't believe I will go back with you," Agnes said, to Ruth. "I can't
sit there and hear Trix murder that part. Oh, dear!"

"I bet you won't ever eat any more strawberries," chuckled Neale, who
had come over the back fence of the Corner House premises, that being
his nearest way to school.

"Don't speak to me of them!" cried Agnes. "A piece of Mrs. MacCall's
strawberry shortcake would give me the colic, I know--_just to look at
it_!"

"Oh, you'll get all over that before the strawberry season comes around
again," her older sister said placidly. "You'd better come, Aggie."

"No."

"Oh, yes, Aggie, do come!" urged Neale. "Be a sport. Come and see and
hear us slaughter _The Carnation Countes