But the fact that she
attended a missionary meeting in the Baptist church that afternoon made
me a friend of missions forever. Suffice it to say, then, that my
pantomime kept pace and time with Mr. Hinman's system of punctuation
until the last line was sobbed and whacked out. I groped my bewildered
way to my seat through a mist of tears and sat down gingerly and
sideways, inly wondering why an inscrutable providence had given to the
rugged rhinoceros the hide which the eternal fitness of things had
plainly prepared for the school-boy.
But I quickly forgot my own sorrow and dried my tears with laughter in
the enjoyment of the subsequent acts of the opera, as the chorus
developed the plot and action. Mr. Hinman, who had been somewhat gentle
with me, dealt firmly with the larger boy who followed, and there was a
scene of revelry for the next twenty minutes. The old man shook Bill
Morrison until his teeth rattled so you couldn't hear him cry. He hit
Mickey McCann, the tough boy from, the Lower Prairie, and Mickey ran out
and lay down in the snow to cool off. He hit Jake Bailey across the legs
with a slate frame, and it hurt so that Jake couldn't howl--he just
opened his mouth wide, held up his hands, gasped, and forgot his own
name.
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