“We called them the kid-gloved Dandy Fifth When we passed them on parade.” A sharp, imperative rat-a-tat-tat on the class-room door almost at her back startled the speaker, Sidney Dallas. She turned for an instant, but that instant was enough to scatter her wits like chaff before the wind. She paused--stammered--paused again, then repeated vaguely: “We called--we called them the kid-gloved Dandy Fifth When we passed them on parade. We called--we called--” But the words would not be coaxed back. Her mind was a perfect blank. She was so confused that she did not see that the visitor who was being ushered in by Bess Martin, and whose sharp knock had so disconcerted her, was her own mother. A hot flush of shame scorched her face, the crowd of attentive faces before her began to waver, her knees grew weak, her feet cowardly, but she made one more brave effort: “We called--we called”--she repeated weakly and hurriedly, then stopped short. “But it would not come,” murmured mischievous Ted Scott, lugubriously. Ted had been crowded to the front seat, which he shared with two other boys. The boys snickered, and Sidney’s misery was complete. Never before had she failed in a speech, or realized the humiliation. All a-tremble she stepped off the platform, and with scarlet face and tearful eyes passed down the aisle between the double row of visitors, whose looks of sympathy her distorted imagination turned into looks of derision at her distress. But the tears should not fall, and she would not lower her head. As she reached her seat she caught a look of amusement on the face of Myrtle Emmons, who sat at the desk immediately behind her own. It was that that gave her the bit over her runaway self-possession. Myrtle was somewhat noted for making fun of people. She would show Myrtle how little she cared. Disregarding Myrtle’s nudge, she concentrated her attention upon the beautifully decorated school-room. It had been transformed into a veritable bower, not with boughs of pine and cedar as in the Eastern States, but with fragrant branches of catalpa with their great clusters of snowy blossoms and with immense sprays of feathery asparagus. The platform, as well as the teacher’s desk at the back of it, was banked with potted ferns and palms and flowering plants. The beribboned waste-basket formed a huge bouquet of feathery greenery, amidst which tall, graceful sunflowers bowed their golden heads. That artistic touch was her own, and she gazed at it with pride. Sunflowers and asparagus adorned the pictures and caught up the folds of the large flag draped gracefully over the front blackboard, and of the bright bunting festooned around the walls.