ied the desk ahead. A day
earlier he had counted himself fortunate in having her for a neighbor,
for she was clever at studies which required plodding perseverance, and
not at all bashful about helping a fellow when teacher pounced on him
with a catch question.

Now he loathed her slow, insipid smile as his left hand released her
plump right fingers at the end of the exercise. If she were only the new
little girl!

Then he noticed, as a prosaic business man will notice suddenly, that a
skyscraper which he has passed daily for months is out of line with its
neighbor, that the seat behind the new little girl was unoccupied and
that she stood alone in the aisle during exercises. Would that he had
possession of it!

To sit next her, to be able to exchange the trivial, yet important,
little confidences in which fourth-graders indulge when teacher's back
is turned, or to win her quick, flashing smile as a reward for
sharpening her pencil or for judicious prompting during a spelling
lesson!

To achieve these things, he would be willing even to relinquish the
powers which he held by virtue of his aisle end seat. And to allow
voluntarily some other pupil to fill the inkwells, distribute pencils,
scratch pads, and drawing paper at their appointed intervals, and to
indulge in a hundred and one other little acts of monitorship is no
slight sacrifice for a boy to make.

The geography lesson began. With the disregarded map of Africa in front
of him as a blind, he fell to comparing the new girl with the other
maidens of his acquaintance.

Take poor, inoffensive Olga for example. Her placid being seemed clumsy
and her movements bovine as he pictured again the dainty grace of that
new arrival as she stepped down from the teacher's platform; or
Irish-eyed, boisterous, fun-loving Margaret! John had regarded her with
a great deal of favor during the past two weeks, for she was a jolly
little sprite with a mother who, thanks to the neighborhood's laundry
patronage, contrived to clothe her daughter in a constantly varying and
seldom-fitting assortment of dresses. Now echoes of her noisy laughter
returned to grate upon his memory. The new little girl wouldn't laugh
like that. Not she! No one with so sweet a smile had need of impudent
grins. And what a contrast between Margaret's untidy mop and those long,
silken curls which so fascinated him.

Yes, the boy decided that here was the being who was to be his girl for
the ensuing year--