It was a long way to the school-house, and by the time the children got there their feet were numb. There was a great roaring fire in the enormous fireplace; but it did Patty no good, for this was one of the master's "whipping days," and he strode the brick hearth like a savage warrior. Where was the _little_ boy or girl brave enough to say, "Master, may I go to the fire?" Poor Patty took out her Ladies' Accidence, and turned over the leaves. It was a little book, and the title sounds as if it was full of stories; but you must not think Patty would have carried a story book to school! No; this was a Grammar. In our times little girls scarcely seven years old are not made to study such hard things, for their teachers are wise enough to know it is of no use. Patty was as good a scholar as any in school for her age. Her letters had been boxed into her ears very young by Miss Judkins, and now she could read in Webster's Third Part as fast as a squirrel can run up a tree; but as for grammar, you could put all she knew into a doll's thimble. She could not tell a noun from a verb, nor could Linda Chase or Sally Potter, if you stood right over them, all three, with three birch switches. They all knew long strings of words, though, like this:-- "A noun is the name of anything that exists, or that we have any notion of." She liked to rattle that off--Patty did--or her little nimble tongue, her head keeping time to the words. I wish you had heard her, and seen her too, or that I could give you any idea of Mr. Purple's school. Stop a minute. Shut your eyes, and think you are in Perseverance.--There, do you see that man in a blue swallow-tail coat? This is the master. His head runs up to a peak, like an old-fashioned sugar loaf, and blazes like a maple tree in the fall of the year. He stands by his desk making a quill pen, and looking about him with sharp glances, that seem to cut right and left. Patty almost thinks his head is made of eyes, like the head of a fly; and she is sure he has a pair in the pockets of his swallow-tail coat. But it is a great mistake. He does not see a twentieth part of the mischief that is going on; and what he does see he dares not take much notice of, for he is mortally afraid of the large boys. There is a great noise in the room of shuffling feet and buzzing lips, but he pretends not to hear it. Up very near the back seat sits Mary Lyman, or Polly, as almost everybody calls her, with a blue woolen cape over her shoulders, called a vandyke, and her hair pulled and tied, and doubled and twisted, and then a goosequill shot through it like a skewer. Behind her, in the very back seat of all, sits Dorcas, the prettiest girl in town, with a pale, sweet face, and a wide double frill in the neck of her dress. Patty's future husband, William Parlin, is just across the aisle. He is fourteen years old, and you may be sure has never thought yet of marrying Patty.