Fifteen minutes later Harmon Dreer, returning from the post office,

spied ahead of him, loitering in the direction of the Academy, two boys
of whom one looked at the distance of a block away very much like the
obnoxious Byrd
Fifteen minutes later Harmon Dreer, returning from the post office,
spied ahead of him, loitering in the direction of the Academy, two boys
of whom one looked at the distance of a block away very much like the
obnoxious Byrd. For choice, Dreer would have avoided Amy on general
principles, but in this case he had no chance, for, unless he climbed a
fence and took to the fields, there was no way for him to reach school
without proceeding along the present road. Neither was it advisable to
dawdle, for he had Greek at ten o’clock, it was now twelve minutes of
and “Uncle Sim” had scant patience with tardy students. There was
nothing for it but to hurry along, but the fact didn’t improve his
temper, which was already bad. To walk three-quarters of a mile in the
expectation of getting a valuable registered parcel and then discover on
opening it that it contained only two folded copies of a daily newspaper
was enough to sour anyone’s disposition! And that is what had happened
to Dreer. Someone, of course, had played a silly joke on him, but he
couldn’t imagine who, nor did he for a moment connect Byrd’s appearance
on the scene with the registered parcel. When he reached the two ahead
he saw that one was Byrd, as he had thought, and the other Thayer. They
were so deeply in conversation that he was almost past before they
looked up. When they did Dreer nodded.