When he saw her sitting in the classroom,
smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening
in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared
to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had
always been so irksome to him.
"Look at her!" he muttered to himself. "Same ole Teacher's Pet!"
Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and he would conjure
up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of
the spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a
dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)
and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd
be out of that ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take
care never to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other
street when he had to go down-town.
"The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said to Fred
Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they reached the
senior year.
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