"I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, "until some one comes to fill the place." And she went to her
desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed place.
Just before school closed, Jo appeared, wearing a grim expression as she stalked up to the
desk, and delivered a letter from her mother, then collected Amy's property, and departed, carefully scraping the mud from her boots on the door mat, as if she shook that dust of the place off her feet.
An unhealthy-looking boy, with warts all over his hands, stepped from his place to the master's
desk, and raised his eyes imploringly to Squeers's face; his own, quite white from the rapid beating of his heart.
"I will see this woman and will think the thoughts I have never dared to think," he told himself, gripping the edge of the
desk and waiting.
With these comforting remarks, Mr Rugg seated himself on an office- stool at the
desk and proceeded to business.
When they had severally remained in this condition for some minutes, Miss Sally all at once gave a loud rap upon the
desk with her clenched fist, and cried, 'I've hit it!'--as indeed she had, and chipped a piece out of it too; but that was not her meaning.
After laying his head on the
desk for a little while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry.
Francine closed the book, and locked it up again in her
desk. "Now I know," she said to herself, "what reminded me of St.
Besides, the
desk itself has its own familiar interest as my constant traveling companion of many years past."
Once, the first time, when the rent of the house was two months behind and the landlord was threatening dispossession, it was Felipe Rivera, the scrub-boy in the poor, cheap clothes, worn and threadbare, who laid sixty dollars in gold on May Sethby's
desk. There were other times.
The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like the hall; but through the west window the sun threw a long shaft of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on the tarnished brass andirons in the fireplace, and touched the nickel of the telephone on the great
desk in the middle of the room.
The night- clerk was there, behind the
desk, sitting in the dim light of another tallow candle--just sitting and staring.