He lowed at first thet like ez not the monitor was cuttin' up some sort
o' didoes, the way monitors does gen'ally, so he waited a-while; but it
kep' a-gittin' worse, so d'rectly he got up, an' he went in to see what
the excitement was about; an'lo and beholt! Sonny had slipped down the
open chimbly right in amongst 'em--come out a-grinnin', with his face
all sooted over, an', says he, "Say, fellers," says he, "I run up the
lightnin'-rod, an' he's a-waitin' for me to come down." An' with that he
went an' gethered up his books, deliberate, an'fetched his hat, an'
picked up a nest o' little chimbly-swallows he had dislodged in comin'
down (all this here it happened thess las' June), an' he went out an'
harnessed up his goat-wagon, an' got in. An' thess ez he driv' out the
school-yard into the road the teacher come in, an' he see how things
was.

Of co'se sech conduct ez that is worrisome, but I don't see no, to say,
bad principle in it. Sonny ain't got a bad habit on earth, not a-one.
They'll ever' one o' the teachers tell you that. He ain't never been
knowed to lie, an' ez for improper language, why he wouldn't know how to
select it. An' ez to tattlin' at home about what goes on in school, why,
he never has did it. The only way we knowed about him comin' down the
school-house chimbly was wife went to fetch his dinner to him, an' she
found it out.


[Illustration: "He had been playin' out o' doors bare-feeted."]


She knowed he had went to that school in the mornin', an' when she
got there at twelve o'clock, why he wasn't there, an' of co'se she
questioned the teacher, an' he thess told her thet Sonny had been