CHAPTER X
BEAUTIFUL SNOW
The girls had heard the boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity—or injury—precluded his having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in the schoolroom he was the most stern of all the instructors at Salsette.
"Oh, poor Tommy!" gasped Betty, wringing her hands.
"Served him right," declared Louise. "He should not have played that trick. A lame man, too!"
"Oh, Louise!" exclaimed her sister Bobby, "Tommy didn't know it was an artificial limb he was stumbling over."
"And I'm sure I didn't know it was his old pegleg I tripped on twice," declared Teddy Tucker in high dudgeon. "What did he want to go to sleep for, spraddled all over the aisle?"
He said this in a very low voice, however; and he kept well behind Bob and the girls. As for Timothy Derby and Libbie Littell they actually
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