But to-night the master was absent, and the new assistant, a mild-eyed, pale young man, sat in Nicholas Chopin's chair and sought to keep the boys at their tasks. He had been among them but two or three days, and at the very beginning the pupils had decided that this was his first attempt at teaching. His soft voice and worried look filled the boys with glee; and half their playtime was spent in making plans to mock and deride him. Until now, however, they had failed to carry out their mischievous schemes, for Nicholas Chopin had compelled them to treat the new assistant with respectful obedience. But to-night the master had gone from home, leaving his assistant in full charge of the school, and the boys threw all rules to the winds for the sole purpose of vexing the new teacher. Instead of the usual stillness maintained at this hour, the room was a-buzz with whispers. The boys noisily shuffled their feet, rattled their papers, and tossed their books about on their desks. The teacher rapped sharply with his ruler again and again, but these warnings were greeted with impudent chuckles and laughter. At one of the side desks sat Frédéric Chopin, the master's son, toiling at a much blotted copy-book. He was heartily liked by every boy in the house, and for some reason, whenever he spoke in his quiet way, the others obeyed his wishes without a syllable of complaint. John Skotricki, who had the strongest arms and legs at school, was the ringleader on the playground; but Frédéric was chief councillor and fun-maker at all other times and places. Although the master's son, he enjoyed no special favor or liberty, but was held to the same line of duty prescribed for the other students. In the classroom he was not noticeably clever, for he was very bad at numbers, and it is doubtful if he could have found his own country on the great globe in the corner; but there was one thing that Frédéric Chopin could do better than any other boy in the school, better than any other boy in Warsaw, better, probably, than any other boy in all the country of Poland: he could play magnificently on the piano. So remarkably he played that everybody wondered, and strangers often came to the house for a glimpse of the young musician. A year before, when he was nine, he had played at a great charity concert given in the city hall, and after the performance the people had surged by the stage to shake his hand and praise him; and in the excitement and pleasure of it all, he might have become very vain of his powers and success, but he remembered just in time that while he could play brilliantly on the piano, he could not jump as far by ten inches as John Skotricki, and that he did not know as much about grammar as the youngest pupil at school.