“What’s that?” asked Miss Bradley.

No one answered, except that, here and there in the room, a boy or girl snickered.

There was one queer thing about Charlie’s new toy auto.  It made a great deal of buzzing as the wheels whirred around when the wound-up spring made them do this, but the machine itself did not go very fast.  It seemed to make a great fuss about getting anywhere, but it took its own time in doing it.

This was the reason why the auto, though it had been pulled out of Charlie’s pocket with his handkerchief and had fallen into the aisle down which it ran, did not very soon get where Miss Bradley could see it.  She could hear the buzzing sound, but she did not know what it was.

“Who is making that noise?” she asked again.

No one answered, for, truth to tell, neither a boy nor a girl in the room was causing the noise; though of course Charlie was to blame, in a way.

Miss Bradley was looking over the room, into the faces of her pupils.  The buzzing sound kept up.  It seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.  The windows were open, and she thought a bee or a wasp might have flown in.  But it would be a very large wasp or bee, indeed, which would make so loud a buzzing sound as this.

“Children——­” began Miss Bradley, and then she suddenly stopped, for something struck her on the foot.  And it was right near her foot that the buzzing noise sounded.  But as she had walked a little way down from her platform, and her foot was partly under the first desk—­that of fat Bobbie Boomer—­Miss Bradley could not see what had struck her.

“Oh!” she cried, as she jumped back, rather startled.

Charlie Star and Bunny Brown could not help laughing right out loud.  They knew what had caused all this excitement.

A moment later Miss Bradley knew also.  For Charlie’s buzzing auto, having struck her foot, turned aside and rolled out on the floor in front of her teaching platform, in plain sight.  There the little red toy came to a stop, for its spring was fully unwound.

Charlie and Bunny stopped their laughing suddenly as the teacher looked down at them.

“Whose is this?” asked Miss Bradley, in a voice she hardly ever used in the classroom, for her pupils were generally very orderly.  “Who owns this automobile?” she asked, sternly.

Timidly Charlie Star raised his hand.

“If you please, Teacher, it’s mine,” he said.  And such a weak little voice as it was!  Not at all like the loud, hearty tones Charlie used when he called to Bunny, “first shot agates!”

Miss Bradley stooped over and picked up the toy.  She placed it on her desk, and then, turning to face the children, she said: 

“I am very sorry about this.  I thought, after what had happened to Helen, that you were going to settle down and study your lessons.  Why did you bring this auto to school, Charlie?  And why did you take it out?”