There was never, at that school, any long period without its little diversions. Jane Spencer, to be sure, was in the graduating class and his behavior had been most exemplary for some months; but there was no such inhibition on the behavior of Ollie Pilcher and the Carlings. The Carlings appeared one morning with grotesquely high collars, at the sight of which a titter ran about the schoolroom. The Carlings preserved an admirable gravity. Mr. MacDalie looked up, eyed the twins with marked displeasure, but said nothing, and the titter gradually faded out. The Carlings were aggrieved and felt that they had been guilty of a failure. So they had, in a measure, and Sally could not help feeling sorry for them. She reflected that Jane would never have done anything of that kind. Jane would never have made a failure of anything that he undertook, either. Jane would not have done what Ollie Pilcher did, later, although that effort of Ollie's was a conspicuous success, after its kind. It was the fashion, among certain of the boys, to have their hair clipped when the warm weather came on. Everett Morton had never had it done, nor had Dick Torrington, nor did Jane Spencer. They were not in the clipped-hair caste. But Ollie Pilcher was; and it was no surprise to the other boys when, a week before school closed, Ollie came with clipped hair showing below his cap. He was just in time, and he went at once and in haste to the schoolroom, removing his cap as he entered the door. The bell in Mr. MacDalie's hand rang as he took his seat. Mr. MacDalie was not looking at Ollie, as it happened, but those behind Ollie could not help seeing him. A ripple of laughter started; it grew as more of those present caught sight of him. Mr. MacDalie saw him. He chuckled wildly and the laughter swelled into a roar. Rising from the top of Ollie's head of clipped hair was a diminutive braided lock about three inches long, tied with a bow of narrow red ribbon. And Ollie did not even smile while Mr. MacDalie was wiping his eyes before him. His self-control was most admirable. The laughter finally subsided, for the time being, sufficiently to permit King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther and Mordecai and Haman to hold their audience spellbound for five minutes. That same audience had been held spellbound by that same story throughout the whole of the year just past and through other years; for Mr. MacDalie, for some reason known only to himself and which Sally had tried in vain to guess, had confined his reading so completely to the Book of Esther that his hearers knew the book pretty nearly by heart.