She walked back again, and a surf of boys was thrown
at her feet. The waters rose and licked and spilled and flowed onward
again. Podge felt a sense of strangling, as if going down, in a hollow
gulf of resounding wave, and shouted:
"Help! Save me! Save me!"
She heard a voice like the principal teacher's, say in a lapping, watery
way, "Miss Byerly, what is the meaning of this? Your division is in
disorder. Nobody has recited. Unless you are ill I must suspend you and
call another teacher here."
"Help! I'm floating off upon the river. Save me! I drown! I drown!"
The scholars were all up and excited. The principal motioned another
lady teacher to come, and laid Podge's head in the other's lap.
"Is it brain fever?" he asked.
"She has been under great excitement," Podge heard the other lady say.
"The Zane murder occurred in her family. Last night, I have been told,
Miss Byerly refused Mr. Bunn, our principal school director, and a man
of large means, who had long been in love with her."
"Where is he?" said the principal.
"I heard it from his sister," said the other lady. "Mortified at her
refusal, because confident that she would accept him, he sailed this day
for Europe."
These were the last words Podge Byerly heard.
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