Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/89

Rh done to his satisfaction and the letters were formed into words, These he read half aloud to himself, They sounded well. His teacher would surely be pleased with this composition. True, it was short, but he decided it was as much as he could reasonably get on an apple.

Then he stole out into the wood-shed for a lantern, and hied him to the orchard as fast as his fat legs could run. Climbing the ladder, he selected with great deliberation, from an old apple-tree, the largest, roundest, smoothest green apple he could spy, and carefully broke it off, stem and all. In an incredibly short space of time (for Tommy) the task was finished. The letters were gummed and put in their places on the apple, and the apple itself carefully placed on a window-sill where the morning sun might reach it first. Henceforth it was literally “the apple of his eye.” A dozen times a day he ran to see if it was ripening the proper way or if any of the letters had come off.

September came. A double row of bright-faced, freckled sunburned boys, spick-and-span in clean sailor waists, stood at the school-house door on opening day.

The pupils of Miss Sanderson’s class could easily be detected by the important way each boy carried a roll of neatly tied manuscript.

Tommy Atkins, however, had no roll of paper and no important air, Indeed, it was with a feeling of blank surprise and not a little uneasiness that he beheld the aforesaid manuscripts.

“What had he done? What had they done?” he asked himself.

The teacher had a bright smile of welcome for each returning pupil. As each boy in turn brought up his roll of paper and deposited it with a confident or anxious air, according to his temperament, Tommy Atkins’s heart sank lower. He was the last boy to go up to the desk. Laying down his composition, carefully wrapped in silver-paper and tied with lilac “love-tibbon,” his lips quivered with anxious fear when be heard the teacher say, as she felt the hard round parcel:

“Why, what is this, Tommy?”



“It ’s my—composition—ma'am,” stuttered Tommy. “I guess—I did n’t—do it right.” He blinked back the tears which would come. He was a conscientious little chap and took his schooling seriously.

Then he broke down, for, after all, he was only a little boy and not a British soldier as you might imagine from his name, and he had put so much heart into this effort! He did not want the prize so much, but he wished to please his teacher. Now he began to see that he must have missed something that his