Expelled! And she had scarce dared hope for such a thing.
* * * * *
To sound the humor of Warble.
She hated school. Books, restraint, routine, scratching slate pencils, gum
under desks, smells--all the set up palette of the schoolroom was not to
her a happy vehicle of self-expression.
Often, in hope of being sent home, she had let a rosy tongue-tip protrude
from screwed up red lips at teacher, but it had gone unpunished.
And now--
Now, rocking in triumphant, glorious mirth, her plump shoulders hunched in
very ecstasy, the child was on the peak!
Expelled! Oh, gee!
And all because she had put a caterpillar down Pearl Jane Tuttle's back.
One little, measly caterpillar.
Pearl Jane had sat right in front of her.
A loose neckband round a scrawny neck.
And when Pearl Jane wiggled, a space of neck between two thin, tight black
pigtails--a consequent safe-deposit that was fairly crying out to have
something dropped down it.
A caterpillar mooching along the schoolroom aisle--clearly sent by
Providence.
Helpless in the grip of an irresistible subconscious complex, Warble scoops
up the caterpillar and in an instant has fed him into the gaping maw at the
back of that loose gingham neckband.
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