HAPPY DAYS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3020, 6 March 1917, Page 6

HAPPY DAYS

THE ANGEL AND THE PIE (By Wi.) Bales, who ruled the Fifth Standard, called them the Augels, chiefly because they were devils, but demonstrated his secret sympathy by giving them seats at the top of the fourth row, which commanded a view of Mein Street and various interesting distractions in the shape of policemen, bakers' carts, and furtive truants en route to the Town Belt. Outsido, in the playground, the Angels became Mac and Baldie out of a unanimous deference to their physical capabilities for showing resentment in painfully practical >terms. It is duo to them to say that thev were feared, respected, and cursed. One day a gentle child, the offspring of a peace-loving clan, brought as part of his lunch a pie. This fact became known to the Augels. "Baldie," said Mac. sotto voce, "I'm going to have that pie." Baldie looked at Bates, and scanned the general situation. The owner of the pie sat in the front seat of the same row, five desks down. "How are you going to do it?" he asked. "Sneak down while Batsey's marking the roll and grab it from under the seat," said Mac. Baldie deprecated the enterprise. "No good risk-in' a hiding for the sake of a pie," he said. "Why should the. little Cissie boy have his pi/and us go hungry?" demanded Mac. Baldie's mouth watered. "All right, mind your eye," he cautioned. • Mac slipped from his seat, and crawled stealthily on all fours down the steps to the front desk. Scholarly industry flagged in the end scats of that row as curious eyes watched his progress. He reached the front seat, stretched out a furtivo hand, and grabbed the pic. The owner, startled by tho rustling of the paper bag, looked round in indignant surprise, but the protest that rushed to his lips was frozen by a glare of concentrated ferocity. "Shut up—or I'll smash you at playtime," hissed the highwayman. With the pie in one hand Mac began his return journey past several pairs of awe-struck eyes. Halfway up, Snowy Simpson, sitting at the end of his desk, sh"6t out a hand and wrenched off half the pie in a spirit of reckless bravado, for which ho was hold to strict accountability during a lively recess. Two seats further on another daring soul made a further raid, and the disgusted highwayman finally reached his seat with the blackened outer rim. , "Ha!" said the voice of Bates. "What do I perceive in tho Angels' corner?" The Angels''vouchsafed no answer. ' "Come hither," said tho inexorable Bates. "I would commune with the Angels." The Angels descended to judgment. "What were you doing out of your seat?" he inquired. Mac suggested that a pencil could roll a'long way if it dropped right. "So be it," said the Arbiter. "Two cuts or forty lines?" | "Two cuts, please." | Fiat justitia! '