May timidly raised her eyes to his—they were filled with tears. “Will you, May—will you give me the rose?” The next moment the little bud was in the hand of the transported Harry, accompanied with a look of such innocent, confiding love, as made his heart dance with rapture. Was there ever in after life a moment of such pure and exquisite happiness as then filled the hearts of the lovers! But the rose-bud, the poor rose-bud, bitterly did it rue the change from its lovely resting-place to the great hand of the school-master—besides coming very near being crushed to pieces between that and the dainty little fingers of May as she placed it therein! Well, it must have been a puzzling sum indeed to keep the master so long at May Lillie’s desk! and taking advantage of his inattention, the mischievous scholars carried on a pretty little by-play of their own—there was tittering in corners, and whispering behind torn covers—and soft, soft tiptoeing from one seat to another, and little paper pellets flying like hail-stones from side to side. Ah, dear, happy children—there is no danger—you might knock the master’s head off, and he would never know it! “Young ladies—children—I give you a holyday,” quoth Harry, rapping his desk with the dread ferule, insignia of his power. “A holyday—_huzza—huzza_—a holyday!” shouted the girls and boys, rushing from the school-room. But the older girls looked slyly at each other, and then at the blushing May. “Look—look!” exclaimed half-a-dozen in a breath. “The master is walking home with May Lillie!” * * * * * Diogenes Lillie, Esq., sat in his study. Around him were gathered all those powerful incentives necessary to call forth that great masterly genius which lay hid somewhere in his brain—somewhere—from whence, though many times coaxed and flattered, it had as yet resolutely refused to stir. Upon the table before him, bearing at each corner respectively a bust of Plato, of Shakspeare, Homer, and Milton, were pamphlets, reviews, folios, quartos and duodecimos, thickly strewn—but what was more to the purpose, there was drawn up close to the elbow of Mr. Lillie, a quire of hot-pressed letter-paper, with edges of gold—a silver standish, bearing the golden pen ingrafted in a feather of pearl, and the cerulean ink with which genius should indite the virgin page, whenever said genius should deign to issue from its dark hiding-place. The lips of Diogenes were closely pressed together—his eyes upturned with a frenzied glare to the ceiling, and deep indentations, like the rind of a musk-melon, corrugated his brow. Reader—he was conceiving. Bringing down his clinched hand with a force which made old Homer nod, he exclaimed: