But if you know your business you can give your game his own way, suiting your motion to his, till you wear him out, and then he is yours.  That is good fishing, and the good thing about it is that it gets the game!

“Dodd” was hooked.  His staying away from school was the first tug that he gave the line that caught him.  Mr. Bright let him run.  He ran for three days, and then gave up on that tack.  The fisher reeled in the line and watched for the next break.

CHAPTER XII.

But on Thursday morning “Dodd” came to school again.  This time he went to the other extreme in the matter of clothes, and came into the room dressed like a dandy.  He had failed to make a sensation, so far, and he had not been used to that sort of thing recently.  For years he had been the cause of something unusual, every few hours, and in ways about as he chose.  As it was now, he seemed to have lost his knack at this art, and to have fallen into the condition of an ordinary individual, concerning whom no one cared particularly.

This annoyed him greatly.  He had come to think he was of some great consequence in the world, by reason of his being so frequently talked to, and prayed over, and reasoned with, and pampered in a thousand ways by those who were really afraid of him; and now, to be set aside without a word or a look, except such as all other pupils got, this was a sore stroke to his vanity.

You see, everybody grows proud of his own attainments, in course of time, no matter what they are, and is anxious to have his fellows appreciate them to their fullest extent, and to acknowledge their excellence in his particular case.  So when he fails to secure a recognition of his supposed talents, then he is cut to the very quick.

“Dodd” felt that his eccentricity had not yet been fully acknowledged in the Emburg school, and he reached still further for the object of his desire by playing the fop rather than the tramp, on his second entry to the school room.

But it was not a success.  The pupils had evidently “sized him up” pretty accurately, on his previous entry, and his second appearance was a more signal failure than the first.

He did little with his books during the day.  He had not come to school to learn.  That was the last thing he thought of doing.  He was there to make a fuss if possible,—­a row, trouble, a sensation; these were what he was after.  He went mechanically to his classes, but paid no attention to what was said or done in them.  He hoped, though, that Mr. Bright would put a question to him about some of the lessons.  He was aching for a chance to snub Mr. Bright, or defy him, by telling him that he didn’t know.  But he got no questions from his teacher that day, nor for some days after.  There are many ways, so many ways, of tiring out a fish, before landing him!

So the day wore on, the first whole day in school for “Dodd” Weaver, for several years.  At recesses he unbent a little, but he was only accosted by some of the youngest pupils of the room, and he felt uneasy and out of place among the larger and more advanced members of the school.