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134 wave showering him. He rushed to the calendar tacked to the wall and turned the pages swiftly.

He stood before the date, petrified.

It was the twenty-ninth of February.

The Maestro seized a cap upon the table, plumped it upon his head, and hop-skipped-jumped down the stairs. "Action, action," his whole being cried. He glanced into the girls' schoolhouse as he passed. The Second Maestra was sitting apathetically in a chair, her baby at her breast, and the little girls, tight up against each other on their high benches, their hands folded upon their bright patadyons, looked like some little strawberry-hued birds that he had seen once in the window of an animal store, a thousand on one perch. The silence, the inaction of the place hurt him to the core, and the remark that suddenly ripped the somnolent atmosphere was so electric that the Maestra sprang to her feet.

"Do you see dde hhett?" she said, lamely, pointing to a pear tree on the chart.

But she might have saved herself the trouble. The head from which had come the remark had disappeared from the door. The Maestro was already fifty yards away, eating up the distance with long, nervous strides. He enfiladed a lane, between fields of high