ok back with a shudder upon the number of parchmenty
sandwiches which I ate, the reservoirs of lemony water which I drank, in
order to be in that lovely creature's society. I experienced agonies in
thinking how much longer it might be before I could get a coat with
tails, when I calculated how soon she would be putting up her back hair.
Her eyes were as blue as I was when I thought she liked Briggs; and she
had a complexion compared with which strawberries and cream were
nowhere. When she was sent to the piano, to show people what the Moodle
system could do in the way of a musical education, I fell into a
cataleptic state and floated off upon a flood of harmony. Miss Moodle
and her mits, self and lemon kids, even the sleepless eye of Barker,
watching for an indiscretion, upon the strength of which he might
defensibly send somebody to bed the next Saturday afternoon, all
vanished from before me, swallowed up in a mild glory, which contained
but two objects,--an angel with low neck and short sleeves, and an
insensate hippopotamus of a piano, which did not wriggle all over with
ecstasy when her white fingers tickled him.

At such moments I would gladly have gone down on all fours, and had a
key-board mortised into my side at any expense of personal torture, if
Miss Tucker could only have played a piece on me, and herself been
conscious of the chords she was awakening inside my jacket. I loved her
to that degree that my hair never seemed brushed enough when I beheld
her; and I quite spoiled the shape of my best boots through an elevation
of the instep, caused by putting a rolled-up pair of stockings inside
each heel, to approximate the manly stature, at our bi-monthly meetings.
Even her friend, Miss Crickey, a mealy-faced little girl, with saffron
hair, who had been pushed by Miss Moodle so far into the higher
branches, that she had a look of being perpetually frightened to death
with the expectation of hearing them crack and let her down from a
great height,--seemed beautiful to me from the mere fact of daily
breathing the same air with such an angel, sharing her liquorice-stick,
and borrowing her sweet little thimble.

I had other reasons for prejudice in Miss Crickey's favor. She was the
only person to whom I could talk freely regarding the depth of my
passion for Miss Tucker. Not even to the object of that tremendous
feeling could I utter a syllable which seemed in any way adequate. With
an overpowering consciousness h