But Bog had a better suit, made of neat gray cloth, which he wore upon occasions.  These occasions happened daily between three and four P.M.  During that interval, it always fell out that Bog had no work to do which he could not postpone as well as not.  And whether it rained or shone, the occasions brought him, like an inexorable fate, through the street where Miss Pillbody’s school was situated.  He would first stride smartly up the opposite sidewalk, whistling, and cast ardent glances at the lower windows of Miss Pillbody’s school, shaded by green curtains with gold borders.

After going two blocks in that direction, he would cross the street, whistling yet, and march boldly up the other sidewalk, past Miss Pillbody’s school, as on an enemy.  But if there had been anybody to watch him closely—­as there was not on that thronged street—­that body would have seen that Bog’s cheeks began to blush, and his eyes to be cast down, and his whistle to be fainter, as he hurried by the neat three-story brick building with the polished doorplate and handsome curtains.

Then he would loiter for a while in front of McFeeter’s grocery, two corners remote, and gaze from that safe distance with intrepidity upon the abode of enchantment; after which he would screw his courage up to the point of marching past the house back and forth again, and would then resume his position at McFeeter’s, and wait until four P.M., or about that time, when the envied door of Miss Pillbody’s establishment would open, and an angel would dazzle upon his sight, with a music book in her hand instead of a harp, and a jaunty little chip bonnet on her head instead of a golden crown.  If the harp and crown had suddenly taken their proper places, and a pair of spangled wings had blossomed right out of her shoulders, and the radiant creature, thus equipped, had spread her pinions and soared up to heaven, the boy Bog would hardly have been surprised.  As this angel came down the happy front steps to the blessed pavement (Bog’s mind supplying these adjectives), Bog would color up, and sneak off at his best walking pace in the opposite direction.  He felt that, if Pet ever saw him, and should ask him what he was doing in that neighborhood, he should melt away in perspiring confusion on the spot.

He called at Mr. Minford’s twice a week, to indulge in the hollow form of asking if he could do anything for him.  There he confronted Pet, with that trembling figure and those averted eyes which an inexperienced thief may show before the man that he has robbed.  But Pet knew not of the adoring spy.

One afternoon, the boy Bog had made his second detour, and was approaching the corner of the favored block, when a novel idea struck him.  The very night before, Bog had posted bills of the play, “Faint Heart Ne’er Won Fair Lady.”  The gigantic lettering arose in his mind’s eye, like the cross in Constantine’s.  He had never seen the drama, and he did not know to what extent Ruy Gomez pushed his audacity, and won the Countess by it.  But the name of the drama held the moral of it; and the moral, as applied to Bog’s case, was:  “Stop at this corner, and take a good view of the, house.”  To do this, in Bog’s opinion, was the height of boldness.  But he thought of the huge parti-colored lettering, and he did it.