as a crash as the heavy paper-weight struck the floor and
then a small whirlwind landed on the astonished George.

"How dare you try to kill my snake!" panted Sarah, crying with rage.
"He never did anything to you! You're a great, cruel, cowardly boy,
that's what you are!"

She was pummeling George unmercifully and he retaliated with
interest, forgetting in the excitement and confusion that his
antagonist was a girl. But while snakes might temporarily cow Miss
Ames, a fight in her room was a situation she knew how to deal
with.

"George! Sarah!" she descended upon the combatants and pulled them
apart with no gentle hand. "I'm ashamed of you! What can you be
thinking of! George, you must know better than to strike a girl, and
Sarah, what would your mother say if she knew you were fighting with
a boy? Why I never heard of such a thing--never!" and Miss Ames
looked as though she never had.

Sarah darted over to the space behind the atlas table where George
had thrown the paper weight. She lifted the glass cube and picked up
the little mashed object under it.

"He's killed it!" she sobbed. "He went and killed my little snake!"

Miss Ames lost her patience which is not to be wondered at,
considering the trying half hour she had endured.

"Sarah Willis you march down to the principal's office," she said
severely. "And throw that disgusting object in the trash can on your
way down. Don't you ever bring another snake, alive or dead, into
this room as long as I am the teacher. I want you to tell Mr. Oliver
exactly what has occurred here this morning and be sure you explain
to him that you fought George simply because he killed that wretched
reptile."

Sarah's heart beat uncomfortably fast as she walked down the broad
stone steps to the first floor where the principal's office was.
Her class room was on the third floor. On the second floor she
stopped and wrapped the dead snake in her handkerchief--for a
wonder she had one--and when she reached the first floor she
studied the pictures hung in the corridor with minutest care.
For once in her short life Sarah was anxious to have time to
stand still. Usually exasperatingly indifferent to rebuke or
reproval, Miss Ames had hit upon the one punishment that Sarah
could be fairly said to dread--an interview with the principal.

She approached the glass door marked "office" slowly. The door was
closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been
"sent to the o