After school--sorrowfully the boy saw the others passing from the room, leaving him behind. And the last to go, glancing back with tear dimmed eyes, was the little girl. Sadly he listened to the voices in the entry and heard their shouts as they burst out doors; and--suddenly, his heart beat quicker and his cheeks burned--_that_ was her voice! Clear and sweet through the open window of the man's memory it came--the voice of his little girl mate of the Yesterdays. She was standing on the worn threshold of the old schoolhouse, calling to her friends to wait; and the boy knew that she was lingering there for him and that she called to her companions loudly so that he would understand. But the teacher knew it too and bade the little girl go home. Then, while the boy listened to that sweet voice growing fainter and fainter in the distance; while he saw her, in his fancy, walking slowly, lagging behind her companions, looking back for him; the teacher talked to him very seriously about the value of his opportunities; told him that to acquire an education was his duty; sought to impress upon him that the most important thing in life was Knowledge. Of course, thought the boy, teacher must know. And, thinking this, he felt himself to be a very bad boy, indeed; because, in his heart, he knew that he would have, that moment, given up every chance of an education; he would have sacrificed every hope of wisdom; he would have thrown away all Knowledge and heaven itself just to be walking down the road with the little girl. And he must have been a little had--that boy--because also, most ardently, did he wish that he was big enough to thrash the teacher or whoever it was that invented blackboards. As the man stooped to take up again his too solid and substantial book, he felt that he was but a schoolboy still. To him, the world had become but a great blackboard. In his private life or in conversation with a friend, he might hide his poorly prepared lesson behind a show of fine talk, a pet quotation, or an air of learning; but when he was forced to put what he knew where all men might see--when he was made to write his sentences in books or papers or compelled to do his problems in the business world--then it was that his lack of preparation was discovered, and that he brought upon himself the ridicule or condemnation of his fellows. Unconsciously he listened, half expecting to hear again the old familiar sentence: "You may study your lesson after school." After school--would there be any after school, he wondered.