As Dick & Co. had disposed of every one of their little rolls of fifteen, few of the students were unprovided with pennies. So the copper stream continued to pour in. Mr. Cantwell could have called any or all of his submasters and teachers to his aid. He thought of it presently, as his fingers ached from handling all the pennies. "Mr. Drake, will you come to the desk?" he called. So Submaster Drake came to the platform, drawing a chair up beside the principal's. But Mr. Cantwell still felt obliged to do the counting, as he was responsible for the correctness of the sums. So all Mr. Drake could do was check off the names as the principal called them. Faster and faster poured the copper stream now. Mr. Cantwell, the cords sticking out on his forehead, and a clammy dew bespangling his white face, counted on in consuming anger. Every now and then he turned to dump two or three handfuls of counted pennies into his open satchel. Gathered all around the desk was a throng of students, waiting to pay. Beyond this throng, safely out of range of vision, other students gathered in groups and chuckled almost silently. Clatter! By an unintentional move of one arm Mr. Cantwell swept fully a hundred pennies off on to the floor. He leaped up, flushed and angry. "Will the young---gentlemen---aid me in recovering the coins that went on the floor?" he asked. There was promptly a great scurrying and searching. The principal surely felt harassed that morning. It was ten minutes of nine when the last student had paid and had had his name checked off. Mr. Cantwell was at the boiling point of wrath. Just as the principal was putting the last of the coins into his satchel Mr. Drake leaned over to whisper: "May I make a suggestion, sir?" "Certainly," replied the principal coldly. "Yet I trust, Mr. Drake, that it won't be a suggestion for an easy way of accumulating more pennies than I already have." "I think, if I were you, sir, I should pay no heed to this joke-----" "Joke?" hissed the principal under his breath. "It's an outrage!" "But intended only as a piece of pleasantry, sir. So I think it will pass off much better if you don't allow the students to see that they have annoyed you." "Why? Do the students _want_ to annoy me?" demanded Mr. Cantwell, in another angry undertone. "I wouldn't say that," replied Mr. Drake. "But, if the young men discover that you are easily teased, they are sufficiently mischief-loving to try other jokes on you." "Then a good friend of theirs would advise them not to do so," replied Mr. Cantwell, with a snap of his jaws. That closed the matter for the time being. The first recitation period of the morning had been lost, but now the students, most of them finding difficulty in suppressing their chuckles, were sent to the various class rooms.