chool. She was settin' there in her desk when school let
out, Emmy Lou was."

But a big girl of the neighborhood objected. "Her teacher went home the
minute school was out," she declared. "Isn't the new lady, Mrs. Samuels,
your teacher?" "Well, her daughter, Lettie, she's in my room, and she
was sick, and her mother came up to our room and took her home. Our
teacher she went down and dismissed the First Readers."

"I don't care if she did," retorted the small boy. "I reckon I saw Emmy
Lou settin' there when we come away."

The three aunts grew pale and tearful, and wrung their hands in despair.
The small boy from the First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker
pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder.
"What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went
past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley.
'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed
in his footsteps.

It was dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting lady,
neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway
of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical
Uncle Michael, lantern in hand.

"Ain't I swept over every inch of this here schoolhouse myself and
carried the trash outten a dust-pan?" grumbled Uncle Michael, with what
inference nobody just then stopped to inquire. Then with the air of
a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels himself a victim, he paused
before a certain door on the second floor, and fitted a key in its lock.
"Here it is then, No. 9, to satisfy the lady," and he flung open the
door. The light of Uncle Michael's lantern fell full upon the wide-eyed,
terror-smitten person of Emmy Lou, in her desk, awaiting, her miserable
little heart knew not what horror.

"She--she told me to stay," sobbed Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia's arms,
"and I stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the coal-box!"

[A] Copyright, 1901, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

What He Got Out of It

BY S. E. KISER.

(From the _Chicago Record-Herald_.)

He never took a day of rest,
He couldn't afford it;
He never had his trousers pressed,
He couldn't afford it;
He never went away, care-free,
To visit distant lands, to see
How fair a place this world might be--
He couldn't afford it.

He never went to see a play,
He couldn't afford it;
His love for art he put away,
He