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66 ANTER drinker water !”
“ Patsy Calloran, if you say that another once before recess, I shall
shut you in the wood closet!”

Miss Carberry’s eyes were very bright, and her cheeks were very pink.
Patsy knew that for a bad sign. He turned to the map of Africa and began
a terrible buzzing, that was meant to show Miss Carberry how hard he was.
studying.

Instead of saying over the names, however, he was merely saying
“ Bz-bz-bz!” like an enormous bumble-bee or an angry blue-bottle fly in a corner
of the window-pane.

Miss Carberry didn’t like bumble-bees or blue-bottle flies. She walked care-
lessly up behind Patsy and stopped him suddenly in the midst of a terrible “bz!”
that sounded like a whole hive of bumble-bees.

The next minute Patsy found himself tumbled all in a heap into what the
boys called the “’Pratus-box.” And then the button turned.

The given name of this little dark closet was the “ Apparatus-box,” and it
meant a place in which to keep globes and pointers and chalk and old maps. It
was also used sometimes, as you have seen, to put naughty boys in.

Patsy shivered as the button snapped, and he was caged as fast as any bird.

“Tt’s dark as a pick-pocket,’ he muttered, and began to cry and wipe
his dirty face on his little ragged sleeve. It was hot, too. Miss Carberry’s
headache must have been very bad indeed or she never could have done it.

He was getting rather drowsy, and might have gone off to sleep to the tune
of “ seven-times-five-are-fifty-five,’ as Lillie Dorr was droning it, when a sudden
rustling and shuffling away of books and other litter from the desks made him
sit up and listen with both his ears. Somebody was speaking to Miss Carberry,
and Miss Carberry was answering in tones wonderfully soft and sugary.

_“Tt’s the committee-mans,” said Patsy to himself. “I’m going to see
something !”’

So he fumbled somewhere in his rags and produced a penknife. A very
good one, too. Patsy could “ trade knives” with anybody.

Softly and cautiously, as a little mouse begins to nibble in the closet, Patsy
began to bore a little hole in the “’Pratus-box.” How much you can see out
of one little round hole! Patsy saw two thirds of the schoolroom out of this
one, and there was the platform with three old men on it in three old rickety
chairs “that they'll have to sit very still in, or they’ll go smash-bang on the
floor,’ thought Patsy. Two of them had gold-headed canes, and one wore a
wig that had slipped a little “ unstraight.” All this Patsy noted with interest.