Why the boys should have been amused at this speech, the new scholar could not tell--the joke was neither new nor witty--only impudent and coarse. But the little boys about the door giggled. "It's a pity something wouldn't eat you, Will Riley--you are good for nothing but to be mean." This sharp speech came from a rather tall and graceful girl of sixteen, who came up at the time, and who saw the annoyance of the new boy at Riley's insulting words. Of course the boys laughed again. It was rare sport to hear pretty Susan Lanham "take down" the impudent Riley. "The bees will never eat you for honey, Susan," said Will. Susan met the titter of the playground with a quick flush of temper and a fine look of scorn. "Nothing would eat you, Will, unless, maybe, a turkey-buzzard, and a very hungry one at that." This sharp retort was uttered with a merry laugh of ridicule, and a graceful toss of the head, as the mischievous girl passed into the school-house. "That settles you, Will," said Pewee Rose. And Bob Holliday began singing, to a doleful tune: "Poor old Pidy, She died last Friday." Just then, the stern face of Mr. Ball, the master, appeared at the door; he rapped sharply with his ferule, and called: "Books, books, books!" The bats were dropped, and the boys and girls began streaming into the school, but some of the boys managed to nudge Riley, saying: "Poor old creetur, The turkey-buzzards eat her," and such like soft and sweet speeches. Riley was vexed and angry, but nobody was afraid of him, for a boy may be both big and mean and yet lack courage. The new boy did not go in at once, but stood silently and faced the inquiring looks of the procession of boys as they filed into the school-room with their faces flushed from the exercise and excitement of the games. "I can thrash him easy," thought Pewee Rose. "He isn't a fellow to back down easily," said Harvey Collins to his next neighbor. Only good-natured, rough Bob Holliday stopped and spoke to the new-comer a friendly word. All that he said was "Hello!" But how much a boy can put into that word "Hello!" Bob put his whole heart into it, and there was no boy in the school that had a bigger heart, a bigger hand, or half so big a foot as Bob Holliday. The village school-house was a long one built of red brick. It had taken the place of the old log institution in which one generation of Greenbank children had learned reading, writing, and Webster's spelling-book. There were long, continuous writing-tables down the sides of the room, with backless benches, so arranged that when the pupil was writing his face was turned toward the wall--there was a door at each end, and a box stove stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by a rectangle of four backless benches. These benches were for the little fellows who did not write, and for others when the cold should drive them nearer the stove.