It was nearing four o’clock, and the closing work of the day was pressing.  Mr. Bright was more than busy with his class, and the room was quiet, the pupils devoting themselves to their work assiduously.  “Dodd” sat listless for some time, but he finally straightened himself up quietly, his face lighted with interest, and it would have been evident to any one watching him (no one was watching him just at this time) that he was about to do something.  He was.

His desk was in the row of seats next the wall, and there was only a narrow aisle between him and the blackboard.  He could reach across this easily.  He reached across.

He picked up a piece of crayon and began drawing lines on the board.  He moved his chalk carefully, and it made no sound.  Yet his movements attracted attention, shortly, and one pupil, and another, and another, turned to watch him.

When “Dodd” found that he had finally succeeded in securing an audience he felt that his point was gained.  He winked to a few of the boys about him, and even half smiled at a somewhat coquettish girl whose eye he happened to catch.  He was winning his way, and he hastened to make the most of his opportunity.

He had not made a half-dozen strokes with the crayon till every one saw that his sketch was a caricature of Mr. Bright.

This gentleman was not handsome.  His features were angular and somewhat irregular, and upon every one of these individualities the graceless artist enlarged at will.  He turned up the nose, and set the stray bits of whiskers, and dotted the cheeks, at war one with another.  He even went further, and with a few clever strokes sketched a dwarfed body for the life-sized head.  He worked rapidly and turned now and then to view his subject.

And all this time Mr. Bright was unconscious of what was going on.  He sat with his face more than half turned away from “Dodd,” and was devoting all his energies to the elucidation of a problem that was particularly troublesome to the advanced class in algebra.  He had no thought of the “order” of his school room.  He was too busy trying to help the boys and girls who sat before him, to have time to trouble himself with the rest of the pupils, who were well able to care for themselves between recitations.  This was his way of “maintaining order.”

But presently he became aware, by soul or ear, that something was wrong about him, somewhere.  For an instant he could not make out what it was, so deeply was he engrossed in his work.  Then, like a flash, it came to him that it was “Dodd”!  He turned his eyes quickly to where the boy sat, and had the good fortune to catch that young gentleman in the very act of adding the finishing touches to his sketch, with much flourish and circumstance.

So much elated was “Dodd,” that for an instant he forgot where he was, and for more than a minute after Mr. Bright caught sight of what he was doing, he continued to put in new lines, every one of which added to the grotesqueness of the picture.