“Take your seat and work out the six problems on page eighty-four of your arithmetic for punishment,” said Anne.  St. Clair looked rather amazed at her tone but he went meekly to his desk and took out his slate.  Then he stealthily passed a small parcel to Joe Sloane across the aisle.  Anne caught him in the act and jumped to a fatal conclusion about that parcel.

Old Mrs. Hiram Sloane had lately taken to making and selling “nut cakes” by way of adding to her scanty income.  The cakes were specially tempting to small boys and for several weeks Anne had had not a little trouble in regard to them.  On their way to school the boys would invest their spare cash at Mrs. Hiram’s, bring the cakes along with them to school, and, if possible, eat them and treat their mates during school hours.  Anne had warned them that if they brought any more cakes to school they would be confiscated; and yet here was St. Clair Donnell coolly passing a parcel of them, wrapped up in the blue and white striped paper Mrs. Hiram used, under her very eyes.

“Joseph,” said Anne quietly, “bring that parcel here.”

Joe, startled and abashed, obeyed.  He was a fat urchin who always blushed and stuttered when he was frightened.  Never did anybody look more guilty than poor Joe at that moment.

“Throw it into the fire,” said Anne.

Joe looked very blank.

“P . . . p . . . p . . . lease, m . . . m . . . miss,” he began.

“Do as I tell you, Joseph, without any words about it.”

“B . . . b . . . but m . . . m . . . miss . . . th . . . th . . . they’re . . .” gasped Joe in desperation.

“Joseph, are you going to obey me or are you not?” said Anne.

A bolder and more self-possessed lad than Joe Sloane would have been overawed by her tone and the dangerous flash of her eyes.  This was a new Anne whom none of her pupils had ever seen before.  Joe, with an agonized glance at St. Clair, went to the stove, opened the big, square front door, and threw the blue and white parcel in, before St. Clair, who had sprung to his feet, could utter a word.  Then he dodged back just in time.

For a few moments the terrified occupants of Avonlea school did not know whether it was an earthquake or a volcanic explosion that had occurred.  The innocent looking parcel which Anne had rashly supposed to contain Mrs. Hiram’s nut cakes really held an assortment of firecrackers and pinwheels for which Warren Sloane had sent to town by St. Clair Donnell’s father the day before, intending to have a birthday celebration that evening.  The crackers went off in a thunderclap of noise and the pinwheels bursting out of the door spun madly around the room, hissing and spluttering.  Anne dropped into her chair white with dismay and all the girls climbed shrieking upon their desks.  Joe Sloane stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and St. Clair, helpless with laughter, rocked to and fro in the aisle.  Prillie Rogerson fainted and Annetta Bell went into hysterics.