re? Allez a votre place!"

"It's all right, sir, if you cross your fingers," suggested Penny.

Poor Mr. Caesar made a movement, as though he would go and push the
mutineer to his place.

"You will go to your seat immediately, Pennybet," he ordered.

Penny cocked his head on one side. "Oh, _sir_," said he
reproachfully.

Our friend always expressed his sense of injustice with this sad
"Oh, _sir_," and, as he generally detected a vein of injustice in
any demand made upon him, the expression was of frequent occurrence.

Mr. Caesar first moved his lips incompetently, and then, with a
studied slowness that was meant to sound imperious, began:

"When I say 'Sit'--"

"You mean 'Sit,'" explained Penny promptly.

"That's impertinence."

But Penny had his head thrown back, and was gazing out of eyes,
curtained by the fall of heavy-fringed lids, at the ceiling.

"Pennybet," cried his master, his very voice apprehensive, "will you
have the goodness to attend?"

"Oh, ah, yes, sir," agreed Penny, awaking from his reverie.

"You haven't the manners of a savage, boy."

"Oh, _sir_."

Mr. Caesar bit his lip, and his silver voice would scarcely come.

"Or of a pig!"

"Would a pig have manners, sir?" corrected Penny.

"That's consummate impudence!"

"Oh, is it, sir?" Penny's tone suggested that he was grateful for
the enlightenment. Henceforth he would not be in two minds on the
subject.

Mr. Caesar, repulsed again by the more powerful character of the boy,
tried to cover the feebleness of his position by sounding as
threatening as possible.

"Go to your seat at once! The impudence of this class is
insufferable!"

Loud murmurs of dissent from twenty boys greeted this aspersion. The
class resolved itself into an Opposition, inspired by one object,
which was to repudiate aspersions. Penny excellently voiced their
resentment.

"Oh, _sir_." (Opposition cheers.)

Mr. Caesar hurled his chair behind him, and approached very close to
Penny.

"Will you go to your seat at once?"

Penny, with all his power, was still a boy; and for a moment the
child in him flinched before the exceedingly close approach of Mr.
Caesar. But the next minute he looked up at the still open window;
shivered, and shuddered; rubbed his cold hands (this beautiful
summer morning); buttoned himself up warmly; went to the master's
desk for his books; dropped them one after another; blew on his
numbed fingers to infuse a little warmth into the