"That's all the fu'ther I got."

Miss Margaret looked at him for an instant, then suddenly lifted
the lid of her desk, evidently to search for something. When she
closed it her face was quite grave.

"We'll have the reading-lesson now," she announced.

Tillie tried to withdraw her attention from the teacher and fix it
on her own work, but the gay, glad tone in which Lizzie Harnish
was reading the lines,

"When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit--"

hopelessly checked the flow of her ideas.

This class was large, and by the time Absalom's turn to read was
reached, "Thanatopsis" had been finished, and so the first stanza
of "The Bells" fell to him. It had transpired in the reading of
"Thanatopsis" that a grave and solemn tone best suited that poem,
and the value of this intelligence was made manifest when, in a
voice of preternatural solemnity, he read:

"What a world of merriment their melody foretells!"

Instantly, when he had finished his "stanza," Lizzie raised her
hand to offer a criticism. "Absalom, he didn't put in no
gestures."