“I hadn’t learnt my lessons fer Monday, and ma said I must stay up in the spare room ’til I knew ’em all by heart.  I didn’t like ter stay up there alone, but when I found I got ter, I set down on the mat an’ ’twan’t long before I’d learnt half of ’em.  Just ’bout that time I heard a awful scratching an’ then I ’membered that Uncle Joshua set a mouse trap down by the beaury.  When I looked, there was a little mouse in it, an’ all to once I knew what I’d like ter do.

“The bedclothes was pulled down over the foot-board, an’ I could see the slit in the tick where they poke in their hands to stir up the straw.  I put the trap with the mouse in it, in there among the straw, an’ then I went down just as quiet as I could, an’ got old Tom an’ tugged him upstairs.

“When I put him on the bed an’ held his head over the hole in the tick, you’d oughter seen his tail switch!  The mouse was a runnin’ ’round in the cage, an’ Tom dove into the slit a scatterin’ the straw all over the bed.  My!  Didn’t it fly?”

“Why you naughty, bad boy,” said little Hitty Buffum.

“What did they say to you,” asked Prue.

“Ma didn’t say much,” said Hi.  “I laid down on the floor and rolled over an’ over, a laughin’ like anything ’til ma come in, an’ she jest looked at that bed, drove Tom out’n the room an’ then she took hold er me, an’ I,—­I had ter stop laughin’ ter cry ’n Grandma Babson said, ’That boy’ll yet come to the gallus.’”

A group of the larger girls were comparing the letters which Randy had sent with those which they had received from Phoebe Small.

“Randy says that she misses the folks at home, and her friends here at school, but aside from that her letters are cheerful, and she feels that she is getting on so rapidly that it makes her contented,” said Molly Wilson, “and she must enjoy the pleasant things which Miss Dayton plans for her Saturdays.”

“We miss Randy,” said Belinda Babson, “but of course we’re glad that she is having such a lovely winter.”

“She writes just as she talks, and when we get one of her letters it seems as if she were with us,” said Jemima.

“I didn’t know what to make of Phoebe Small’s last letter,” said Dot Marvin.  “She commenced by saying that she could never do as she wished, that she didn’t like her roommate and that the two ladies who kept the school watched them so closely that the girls could hardly breathe without asking permission.  Then she wrote, ’I don’t want to say that I’m homesick but,—­’ and then she signed her name.  She didn’t finish the sentence, but there were two blistered places just above the name, as if the paper had been wet, and I am sure that she was crying while she wrote.”

Miss Gilman touched the bell, and the pupils took their places.  Recess was ended, and for the remainder of the forenoon, recitations occupied their minds in place of the much discussed letters.

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