"Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!"
"Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart
of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at
recess."
Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him
in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic
features in vain for any trace of repentance.
There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling,
sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation.
Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and
uplifted hands.
"Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a
slate-pencil!"
"He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of
protruding orbs.
"It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation--"It
wa'n't but harf a one!"
"He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all
breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his
m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it
t-t-t--and it slip-p-ped!"
"Wall, jest you keep your eyes peeled and your ears cocked," replied the
sturdy Simeon, in hoarse and jarring accents; "and see if I don't take it
out of my nose, yet.
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