Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/237

 among a serried swarm of tongue-tied babies and mincing girls, who did not even know the name, let alone the record, of the new Champion of Right in their unsuspecting midst.

Lonely grew fretful and irritable, and made paste balls of his lesson leaflet, and sternly fought back the vague wish that he might escape to the swimming-hole for one good dive off the new spring-board and then a backdrop or two off the old sycamore roots.

His new teacher somewhat sharply requested him kindly not to fidget so much, and asked him if he always squinted that way, and seemed astonished that a big boy like him should not know that Jordan was a river.

And to cap the climax she irritably stopped Lonely (who had for the moment forgotten his sorrows in the beguiling intricacies of an entirely new church tune) from joining in another verse of the closing hymn, if he could sing no better than he was doing.

The shame and ignominy of it all was too much for Lonely's pride. It struck the last