I ever get the chance she’ll find out what’s the matter with her, for once in her life, anyway!” Thus it came to be talked about and understood and expected in Ramsey’s circle, all male, that Dora Yocum’s day was coming.  The nature of the disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its ideal opportunity.  “You’ll see!” said Ramsey.  “The time’ll come when that ole girl’ll wish she’d moved o’ this town before she ever got appointed monitor of our class!  Just you wait!”

They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable indefinitely.  Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the “various divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour”—­one of the phrases by means of which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed auditors.  But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example of “secondary personality”—­a creature fearing nothing and capable of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb—­he was nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him distinction.

He “tried for” the high-school eleven, and “tried for” the nine, but the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of getting cheered.  He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second year of high school, when the class, now the “10 A,” reverted to an old fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.

They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big, patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and gold dust atwinkle over the water.  Hither the napkin-covered baskets were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original settlers of the neighbourhood.

From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it.  Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by groups of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the thickets; two envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and poles which they fashioned from young saplings.  They took mussels from the shallows, for bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites and pleasures secured to themselves.