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Title: Little Citizens

Author: Myra Kelly

Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6662]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 10, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LITTLE CITIZENS ***




Phil McLaury, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.



LITTLE CITIZENS

The Humours of School Life

BY MYRA KELLY

ILLUSTRATED BY W. D. STEVENS





TO MY MOTHER



CONTENTS



A Little Matter of Real Estate

The Uses of Adversity

A Christmas Present for a Lady

Love Among the Blackboards

Morris and the Honourable Tim

When a Man's Widowed

H.R.H. The Prince of Hester Street

The Land Of Heart's Desire

A Passport to Paradise

The Touch of Nature




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS



"Say, Teacher, I got something for you". _Frontispiece_

Isidore Belchatosky, the Adonis of the class

"I got two swollen legs over her"

"My dear little chap, you mustn't cry like that"

"Dismissed with the common herd at three o'clock"

"I must ask you to leave this room"

"Teacher, I tells you 'scuse"

"So you want lick, so you can lick"

"She's a beautiful yonge uptown lady, but easy scared. Oh, awful easy
scared!"

"Don't you dast to touch me," he yelled

"Look at your back!"

"You'll wish you minded your own ---- business before I get through
with you"

Morris Mogilewsky

"I washes me the face"

"Ain't you never comin' on the school for to see mine teacher?"




A LITTLE MATTER OF REAL ESTATE



Four weeks of teaching in a lower East Side school had deprived
Constance Bailey of many of the "Ideals in Education" which, during
four years at college, she had trustingly acquired. But, despite many
discouragements, despite an unintelligible dialect and an autocratic
"Course of Study," she clung to an ambition to establish harmony in
her kingdom and to impress a high moral tone upon the fifty-eight
little children of Israel entrusted to her care. She was therefore
troubled and heavy of heart when it was borne in upon her that two of
her little flock--cousins to boot, and girls--had so far forgotten the
Golden Rule as to be "mad on theirselves und wouldn't to talk even,"
as that Bureau of Fashionable Intelligence, Sarah Schrodsky, duly
reported.

"Und Teacher," Sarah continued, "Eva Gonorowsky's mamma has a mad on
Sadie Gonorowsky's mamma, und her papa has a mad on her papa, und her
gran'ma has a mad on both of papas und both of mammas, und her gran'pa
has a mad somethin' fierce on both of uncles, und her auntie--"

Here Miss Bailey sent the too communicative Sarah to her place and
called the divided house of Gonorowsky to her desk for instant judgment.
And as she held forth she was delighted to see that her words were
falling upon good ground, for the dark and dainty features of her
hearers expressed a flattering degree of conviction and of humility. She
was admiring the wonderful lashes lying damp and dark on Eva's smooth
cheek when the beautiful eyes unclosed, gazed straight across the desk
at Sadie, and Eva took a flying leap into Teacher's lap to cling with
arms and knees and fingers to her chosen refuge.

"Oh, Teacher, Teacher," she wailed, "Sadie makes on me such a snoot
I got a scare over it."

Miss Bailey turned to the so lately placid face of Sadie in search of
the devastating "snoot," but met only a serene glance of conscious
guilelessness and the assurance:

"No ma'an, I don't makes no snoot on nobody. I get killed as anything
off of my mamma sooner I makes a snoot. It ain't polite." This with
a reassuring smile and direct and candid gaze.

"Teacher, yiss ma'an, she makes all times a snoot on me," cried the
now weeping Eva, "all times. She turns her nose around, und makes go
away her eyes, und comes her tongue out long. On'y I dassent to fight
mit her while I'm cousins mit her. Und over cousins you got all times
kind feelings."

"Well, Sadie," Teacher questioned, "what have you to say?"

The dark eyes met Teacher's with no shadow in their depths as Sadie
uttered her denial:

"I _never_ in my world done no snoot."

A shudder of admiring awe swept over the assembled class--followed by
a gasp of open contradiction as Sadie went on with her vindication.
For Sadie's snoots were the envy of all the class. Had not Morris
Mogilewsky paid three cents for lessons in the art, and, with the
accomplishment, frightened a baby into what its angry mother described
as "spine-yell convulsions"? And now Sadie was saying, "I _couldn't_ to
make no snoot. Never. But, Teacher, it's like this: Eva makes _me_ whole
bunches of trouble. Bertha Binderwitz und me is monitors in the yard
when the childrens comes back from dinner. So-o-oh, I says, 'front
dress,' like you says, so the childrens shall look on what head is in
front of them. On'y Eva she don't 'front dress' at all, but extra she
longs out her neck und rubs on me somethin' fierce--"

"It's a lie!" interrupted Eva gently. "I don't make nothing like that.
I stands by my line und Sadie she makes faces on me with her hand. It
ain't polite." This with plaintive self-righteousness. "No ma'an, it
_ain't_ polite--you makes snoots mit your hand like this." And as Eva
illustrated with outspread fingers and a pink thumb in juxtaposition to
a diminutive nose, Teacher, with uncertain gravity, was forced to admit
that snoots of that description are sanctioned by few books of
etiquette.

"Now, my dear little girls," said she, "this quarrelling must stop.
I want you to kiss each other as cousins should."

This suggestion was a distinct failure. Eva and Sadie, with much
fluttering of aprons and waving of curls, sought opposite corners of
the schoolroom, while up started Sarah Schrodsky with: "Teacher, they
couldn't to make no kissing. They're mad on theirselves 'cause their
mammas has a mad. Sadie's mamma says like this on Eva's mamma, 'Don't
you dast to talk to me--you lives by the fifth floor und your man is
a robber.' Und Eva's mamma says--"

When Teacher had managed to silence Sarah she led the weeping
Gonorowskys back to their places and the scholastic world wagged on
in outward tranquillity.

Hostilities were temporarily suspended some days later owing to the
illness of Sadie, by far the more aggressive of the opposing parties.
Eva led a placid life for three peaceful days, and then--as by law
prescribed and postal card invited--Sadie's mother came to explain
her daughter's absence. Large of person, bland of manner, in a heavy
black shawl and a heavier black wig, Mrs. Lazarus Gonorowsky stood
beaming and bobbing in the hall.

"I likes I should Sadie Gonorowsky's teacher see," she began, in the
peculiar English of the adult population of the East Side. Mrs.
Gonorowsky could neither use nor understand her young daughter's copious
invective. Upon being assured that the diminutive form before her was
indeed clothed with authority, she announced:

"Comes a letter I should by the school come. I was Sadie's mamma."
Here she drew from the inner recesses of the black shawl a bundle
which, being placed in a perpendicular position, proved to be the most
recent addition to the Gonorowsky household. She smoothed it with a
work-worn but tender hand, and repeated in a saddened voice: "Yes,
ma'am, I was her mamma und she lays now on the bed."

The increasing sadness of Mrs. Gonorowsky's announcement and its
sinister phraseology startled Teacher. "Not dead!" she cried. "Oh,
surely not dead!"

"Sure not," was the indignant response. "She's got such a sickness she
must lay on the bed, und comes the doctor. Sadie's papa holds much on
that child, Miss Teacher, und all times he has a worry over her. Me
too. She comes by the school tomorrow maybe, und I ask you by a favour
you should do me the kindness to look on her. So she feel again sick
she should better on the house come. She say, 'Oh, mamma, I got a
lovely teacher; I likes to look on her the while she has such a light
face.'"

Having thus diplomatically led up to a question, Mrs. Gonorowsky with
great suavity asked, "Sadie is a good girl, hein?"

"Oh, yes, indeed."

"She is shmardt, hein? She don't make you no troubles?"

"Well," Miss Bailey answered, "she has rather bothered me lately by
quarrelling with her little cousin, Eva."

"So-o-oh!" exclaimed Sadie's parent ponderously. "So-o-oh, Eva
Gonorowsky makes you troubles; she is a bad girl--I tell Sadie--Sadie
is a good girl--I tell her she should make nothings with Eva soch a
bad girl. For what you not put her back by baby class? She is not
shmardt."

"Oh, but she is; she is a bright little thing," cried Teacher. "I
couldn't think of putting her back. She's a dear little girl and I
can't imagine why Sadie quarrels with her."

Mrs. Gonorowsky drew her ample form to a wonderful erectness, readjusted
her shawl, and answered with much stateliness:

"It was a trouble from off of real estate." With dignity and blandness
she proceeded to kiss Teacher's hand, and signified entire willingness
to entrust her precious Sadie to the care of so estimable a young
person, inquired solicitously if the work were not too much for so
small a lady, and cautioned the young person against rainy mornings.
Had she a mackintosh? Mr. Gonorowsky was selling them off that week.
Were her imperceptibles sufficiently warm? Mr. Gonorowsky, by a strange
chance, was absolutely giving away "fine all from wool" imperceptibles,
and the store was near. Mrs. Gonorowsky then withdrew, leaving a kindly
sentiment in Teacher's heart and an atmosphere of ironing-boards and
onions in the hall. On the following morning Sadie returned to her
"light-faced" teacher, and for one whole day hostilities were suspended.

But on the morning after this truce Eva was absent from her accustomed
place and Sadie blandly disclaimed all knowledge of her whereabouts.
After the noon recess a pathetic little figure wavered in the doorway
with one arm in a sling and one eye in a poultice. The remaining eye
was fixed in deep reproach on the face of Isidore Belchatosky, the
Adonis of the class, and the eye was the eye of Eva.

"Eva!" exclaimed Teacher, "oh, Eva, what can you have been doing?
What's the matter with your eye?"

"Isidore Belchatosky he goes und makes me this here shiner," said Eva's
accusing voice, as the eye under the poultice was uncovered for a
moment. It was indeed a "shiner" of aggravated aspect, and Isidore
cringed as it met his affrighted gaze. The sling and the bandages were
of gay chintz, showing forth the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and
their lurid colours made them horribly conspicuous. Friday scampered
across Eva's forehead, pursued by savages; and Crusoe, under his
enormous umbrella, nestled close to her heart.

"Surely Isidore would never hit a little girl?" Teacher remonstrated.

"Teacher, yiss ma'an; he makes me this here shiner. Sadie she goes und
tells him she kisses him a kiss so he makes me a shiner. He's lovin'
mit her und she's got kind feelin's by him, the while his papa's got
a candy cart. It's a stylish candy cart mit a bell und a horn. So-o-oh
I was yesterday on the store for buy my mamma some wurst, und I don't
make nothings mit nobody."

Here the poor, half-blind Eva, with her love and talent for pantomime,
took a gay little walk past Teacher's desk, with tossing head and
swinging skirts. Then with a cry she recoiled from the very memory of
her wrongs.

"Come Isidore! Und he hits me a hack on my leg so I couldn't to hold
it even. So I falls und I make me this here shiner. Und when my mamma
seen how comes such a bile on my bone she had a mad; she hollered
somethin' fierce."

One could well sympathize with the harassed Mrs. Nathan Gonorowsky.

"So-o-oh," continued Eva with melancholy enjoyment, "my mamma she puts
medsin at a rag und bangages up mine eye. Und now I ain't healthy."

"Sadie Gonorowsky, come here!" commanded Miss Bailey, in a voice which
lifted Sadie bodily from the place to which she had guiltily determined
to cling. And Sadie went, jaunty of air, but with shifting eyes.

"Isidore Belchatosky, come here!" commanded Miss Bailey, and Isidore
slunk after his divinity.

Teacher was savagely angry, but bylaws forbade corporal punishment,
and principles--and the Principal--forbade noisy upbraidings. And so
with long, strange words, to supply the element of dread uncertainty,
she began to speak, slowly and coldly as one ever should when addressing
ears accustomed to much sputtering profanity.

"Sadie and Isidore, did you dare to interfere with the life, the liberty
and the happiness of our cherished young friend, Eva Gonorowsky? Did
you _dare_?"

"No ma'an," said Sadie with a sob.

"It's a lie!" said Isidore with a snuffle.

"Did you, Isidore, allow yourself to be tempted by beauty to such
inconceivable depravity as to blacken Eva's eye?"

"No ma'an. Self done it."

"Did you, Sadie, descend so low as to barter kisses with Isidore
Belchatosky?"

"No ma'an," this with much scorn. "I wouldn't to kiss him; he's a
scare-cat, und he tells out."

"What did he tell?" asked Teacher.

"He tells out how I say I kiss him a kiss so he make Eva a shiner. Und
I wouldn't to do it. Never. So he gave me five cents even, I wouldn't
to kiss no scare-cat."

"Well, then, why did you promise?"

"'Cause I couldn't to hit her mineself," said the doughty Sadie. She
was inches taller than her victim, and stout withal. "I couldn't,
'cause I ain't so healthy; I'm a nervous child, Teacher, und I was
day-before-yesterday sick on the bed."

Here the plaintive plaintiff showed a desire to testify once more, and
Teacher appointed three-thirty that afternoon as the hour most suitable
for a thorough examination of the case.

When the last arm had been twisted into the last sleeve, when the last
chin had been tied into the last shawl, when the last dispute as to
ownership in disreputable mittens had been settled, the great case of
Gonorowsky _vs._ Gonorowsky was called. On either side of the desk stood
a diminutive Gonorowsky; Eva still plaintive, and Sadie, redly, on the
defensive. Directly in front stood that labourer defrauded of his hire,
that tool in the hands of guileful woman--Isidore Belchatosky.

"Now," Teacher began, "I want to hear nothing but the truth. Isidore,
did you hit Eva?"

"Yiss ma'an."

"What for?"

"For a kiss."

"From whom?"

Here Sadie muttered a threat "to lay him down dead if he tells," and
Isidore required promise of safe conduct to his own block before he
consented to murmur:

"Sadie Gonorowsky."

"Did you get the kiss?"

"No ma'an."

"Do you know anything about this fight?"

"No ma'an."

"Well, then, you may go home now, and bring your mother with you
to-morrow morning."

Isidore left with a heavy heart and the enquiry was continued.

"What has Sadie been doing to you, Eva?" asked Teacher, and Eva, with
resigned mien, answered:

"All things," and then details followed. "She makes on me a snoot, she
pulls me on the bottom of my hair, she goes und takes her pencil und
gives me a stick in my face. When I was marchin' she extra takes her
shoes und steps at my legs; I got two swollen legs over her. Und
now"--here a sob--"you could to look on how she makes me biles und
shiners."

As Eva's voice droned out these many accusations, Sadie grew more
emphatic in her favourite repartee:

"It's a lie! It's a lie! It's a lie!"

"And now, Eva, will you tell me _why_ Sadie has been doing all these
naughty things?"

"Teacher, I don't know."

"Oh, yes; you do!"

"No ma'an; I don't. I could swear if I do. I kiss up to God." She
wafted a kiss towards the ceiling. "I got all times a kind feelin'
over Sadie, on'y she wouldn't to be glad on me. I seen yesterday her
little brother in the street mit Sadie und she make he shouldn't to
talk to me. My heart it breaks when she make like that; I'm got no
brother und no sister und I'm lovin' _so_ much mit my little cousin. She
goes und makes he should say nothin' und in _mine_ eyes stands tears. I
was sad."

[Illustration: ISIDORE BELCHATOSKY, THE ADONIS OF THE CLASS]

[Illustration: "I GOT TWO SWOLLEN LEGS OVER HER"]

"Well, dear, that's a shame," said Teacher, "and if you really don't
understand, go out into the assembly room and wait for me. Sadie is
going to tell me all about it."

Eva vanished, only to return with the lurid bandage in her hand and
the query:--"Can I make this wet?"

Upon receiving permission so to do she retired with her courteous
"Good-afternoon, Teacher," and her unchanged "Good-by, Sadie; I'm got
yet that kind feelin'." Truly the "pangs of disprized love" seemed
hers.

Several kinds of persuasion were practised in Room 18 during the next
five minutes. Then Sadie accepted defeat, faced the inevitable, and
began:

"It's like this: I dassent to be glad on Eva. So I want even, I dassent.
My mamma has the same mad, und my papa. My mamma she says like this:
So my papa gets sooner glad on my uncle she wouldn't to be wifes mit
him no more! _Such_ is the mad she has!"

"Why?"

"Well. Mine uncle he come out of Russia. From long he come when I was
a little bit of baby. Und he didn't to have no money for buy a house.
So my papa--he's awful kind--he gives him thousen dollers so he could
to buy. Und say, Teacher, what you think? he don't pays it back. It
_ain't_ polite you takes thousen dollers und don't pays it back."

Sadie's air, as she submitted this rule of social etiquette to Teacher's
wider knowledge, was a wondrous thing to see--so deferential was it
and yet so assured.

"So my papa he writes a letter on my uncle how he could to pay that
thousen dollers. _Goes_ months. _Comes_ no thousen dollers. So my papa
he goes on the lawyer und the lawyer he writes on my uncle a letter how
he should to pay. _Goes_ months. _Comes_ no thousen dollers." At each
repetition of these fateful words Sadie shook her serious head, pursed
up her rosy mouth, folded her hands resignedly, and sighed deeply.
Clearly this was a tale more than twice told, for the voice and manner
of Sadie were as the voice and manner of Mrs. Lazarus Gonorowsky, and
the recital was plagiarism--masterly and complete.

"And then?" prompted Teacher, lest the conversation languish.

"Well, my papa writes some more a letter on mine uncle. Oh-o-oh, a
awful bossy-und-mad letter. All the mad words what my papa knows he
writes on mine uncle. Und my mamma she sets by my papa's side und all
the mad words what my mamma knows she tells on my papa und he writes
them, too, on mine uncle. Mine uncle (that's Eva's papa) could to have
a fierce mad sooner he seen that bossy letter. But _goes_ two days.
_Comes_ no thousen dollers."

Here ensued a long and dramatic pause.

"Well, comes no thousen dollers. Comes nothings. On'y by night my mamma
she puts me on my bed; when comes my uncle! He comes und makes a
knopping on our door. I couldn't to tell even how he makes knopping.
I had such a scare I was green on the face, und my heart was going so
you could to hear. I'm a nervous child, Missis Bailey, und my face is
all times green sooner I gets a scare."

This last observation was a triumph of mimicry, and recalled Mrs.
Gonorowsky so vividly as to make her atmosphere of garlic and old
furniture quite perceptible. "So my mamma hears how my uncle knopps
und says 'Lemme in--lemme in.' She says ('scuse me, Teacher)--she says
'he must be' ('scuse me) 'drunk.' That's how my mamma says.

"So goes my papa by the door und says 'Who stands?' Und my uncle he
says 'Lemme in.' So-o-oh my papa he opens the door. Stands my unclemit
cheeky looks und he showed a fist on my papa. My papa has a fierce
mad sooner he seen that fist--fists is awful cheeky when somebody
ain't paid. So my papa he says ('scuse me)--it's fierce how he says,
on'y he had a mad over that fist. He says ('scuse me), 'Go to hell!'
und my uncle, what ain't paid that thousen dollers, he says just like
that to my papa. He says too ('scuse me, Teacher), 'Go to hell!' So-o-oh
then my papa hits my uncle (that's Eva's papa), und how my papa is
strong I couldn't to tell even. He pulls every morning by the
extrasizer, und he's got such a muscles! So he hits my uncle (that's
Eva's papa), und my uncle he fall und he fall und he fall--we live by
the third floor, und he fall off of the third floor by the street--und
even in falling he says like that  ('scuse me, Teacher), 'Go to hell!
go to hell! go to hell!' Ain't it somethin' fierce how he says? On all
the steps he says, 'Go to hell! go to hell! go to hell!'"

Miss Bailey had listened to authoritative lectures upon "The Place and
Influence of the Teacher in Community Life," and was debating as to
whether she had better inflict her visit of remonstrance upon Mr.
Lazarus Gonorowsky, of the powerful and cultivated muscle, or upon Mr.
Nathan Gonorowsky, of the deplorable manners, when this opportunity
to bring the higher standards of living into the home was taken from
her. The house of Gonorowsky, in jagged fragments, was tested as by
fire and came forth united.

Eva was absent one morning, and Sadie presented the explanation in a
rather dirty envelope:

Dear Miss:

Excuse pliss that Eva Gonarofsky comes not on the school. We was moving
und she couldn't to find her clothes. Yurs Resptphs,
Her elders,
Nathan Gonorowsky,
Becky Ganurwoski.

"Is Eva going far away?" asked Teacher. "Will she come to this school
any more?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an, sure she comes; she lives now by my house. My
uncle he lives by my house, too. Und my aunt."

"And you're not angry with your cousin anymore?"

"Teacher, no ma'an; I'm loving mit her. She's got on now all mine best
clothes the while her mamma buys her new. My aunt buys new clothes,
too. Und my uncle."

Sadie reported this shopping epidemic so cheerily that Teacher asked
with mild surprise:

"Where are all their old things?"

"Teacher, they're burned. Und my uncle's store und his _all_ of
goods, und his house und his three sewing machines. All, all burned!"

"Oh, dear me!" said Teacher. "Your poor uncle! Now he can never pay
that thousand dollars."

Sadie regarded Teacher with puzzled eyes.

"Sure he pays. He's now 'most as rich like Van'pilt. I guess he's got
a hundred dollers. He pays all right, all right, und my papa had a
party over him: he had such a awful glad!"

"Glad on your uncle?" cried Teacher, startled into colloquialisms.

"Yiss ma'an. Und my mamma has a glad on Eva's mamma, und my gran'ma
has a glad on both of papas und both of mammas, und my gran'pa has a
glad just like my gran'ma. All, all glad!"

As Teacher walked towards Grand Street that afternoon, she met a radiant
little girl with a small and most unsteady boy in tow. She recognized
Eva and surmised the cousin whose coldness had hurt her even unto
tears.

"Well, Eva, and what little boy is this?" she asked.

And the beaming and transformed Eva answered:

"It's my little cousin. He's lovin' mit me now. Sadie, too, is lovin'.
I take him out the while it's healthy he walks, on'y he ain't so big
und he falls. Say, Teacher, it's nice when he falls. I holds him in
my hands."

And fall he did. Eva picked him up, greatly to their mutual delight,
and explained:

"He's heavy, und my this here arm ain't yet so healthy, but I hold him
in my hands the while he's cousins mit me, und over cousins I'm got
all times that kind feelin'."




THE USES OF ADVERSITY



"I guess I don't need I should go on the school," announced Algernon
Yonowsky.

"I guess you do," said his sister.

"I guess I don't need I should go on the school, neither," remarked
Percival.

"You got to go," Leah informed her mutinous brothers. "I got a permit
for you from off the Principal; he's friends mit me the while I goes
on that school when I was little. You got to go on the school, und you
got to stay on the school. It's awful nice how you learn things there."

But the prospect did not appeal to the Yonowsky twins. It seemed to
forbode restraint and, during their six tempestuous years, they had
followed their own stubborn ways and had accepted neither advice nor
rebuke from any man. The evening of the day which had seen their
birth had left Leah motherless, and her father broken of heart and of
ambition. Since then Mr. Yonowsky had grown daily more silent and
morose, and Leah had been less and less able to cope with "them devil
boys."

A room high up in a swarming tenement had been the grave of her youth
and pleasure. She was as solitary there as she could have been in a
desert, for the neighbours who had known and assisted her in the first
years of her bereavement had died or moved to that Mecca of the New
World, Harlem. And their successors were not kindly disposed towards
a family comprising a silent man, a half-grown girl, and two twin
demons who made the block a terror to the nervous and the stairs a
menace to the unwary. No one came to gossip with Leah. She was too
young to listen understandingly to older women's adventures in sickness
or domestic infelicity, and too dispirited to make any show of interest
in the toilettes or "affaires" of the younger. For what were incompetent
doctors, habit-backed dresses, wavering husbands, or impetuous lovers
to Leah Yonowsky, who had assumed all the responsibilities of a woman's
life with none of its consolations?

Of course she had, to some extent, failed in the upbringing of her
brothers, but she had always looked forward hopefully to the time when
they should be old enough to be sent to school. There they should
learn, among much other lore, to live up to the names she had selected
for them out of the book of love and of adventure which she had been
reading at the time of their baptism. During all the years of her
enslavement she had been a patron of the nearest public library, and
it had been a source of great disappointment to her that Algernon and
Percival had made no least attempt to acquire the grace of speech and
manner which she had learned to associate with those lordly titles.

And now they were refusing even to approach the Pierian Spring! "I
guess I don't go," Algernon was persisting. "I guess I plays on the
street."

"Me, too," added Percival. "Patrick Brennan he goes on that school und
he gives me over yesterday, a bloody nose. I don' need I should go on
no school mit somebody what makes like that mit me."

But with the assistance of the neighbours, the policeman on the beat
and the truant officer, they were finally dragged to the halls of
learning and delivered into the hands of Miss Bailey, who installed
them in widely separated seats and seemed blandly unimpressed by their
evident determination to make things unpleasant in Room 18. She met
Leah's anticipatory apologies with:

"Of course they'll be good. I shall see that they behave. Yes, I shall
see, too, that Patrick Brennan does not fight with Percival. You musn't
worry about them any more, but I fear they have made worrying a habit
with you. If you will send them to school at a quarter to nine every
morning, and at ten minutes to one in the afternoon, I shall do the
rest."

And Leah went out into the sunshine free, for the first time in six
years. Free to wander through the streets, to do a little desultory
shopping, to go down to the river and to watch the workmen driving
rivets in the great new bridge. Never had she spent so pleasant a
morning, and her heart was full of gratitude and peace when she
reflected that hours such as these would henceforth be the order of
the day.

The advantages of a free education did not appeal to "them Yonowsky
devils." Leah was forced to drag her reluctant charges twice a day to
the school-house door--sometimes even up the stairs to Room 18--and
the reports with which Miss Bailey met her were not enthusiastic.
Still, Teacher admitted, too much was not to be expected from little
boys coming in contact, for the first time, with authority.

"Only send them regularly," she pleaded, "and perhaps they will learn
to be happy here." And Leah, in spite of countless obstacles and
difficulties, sent them.

They were unusually mutinous one morning, and their dressing had been
one long torment to Leah. They persisted in untying strings and
unbuttoning buttons. They shrieked, they lay upon the floor and kicked,
they spilled coffee upon their "jumpers," and systematically and
deliberately reduced their sister to the verge of distraction and of
tears. They were already late when she dragged them to the corner of
the school, and there they made their last stand by sitting stolidly
down upon the pavement.

Leah could not cope with their two rigid little bodies, and, through
welling tears of weariness and exasperation, she looked blankly up and
down the dingy street for succour. If only her ally, Mr. Brennan, the
policeman on the beat, would come! But Mr. Brennan was guarding a Grand
Street crossing until such time as the last straggling child should
have safely passed the dangers of the horse-cars, and nothing came in
answer to Leah's prayer but a push-cart laden with figs and dates and
propelled by a tall man, long-coated and fur-capped. His first glance
read the tableau, and in an instant he grasped Percival, shook him
into animation, threw him through the big door, and turned to reason
with Algernon. But that rebel had already seen the error of his ways
and was meekly ascending the steps and waving a resigned adieu to his
sister. The heavy door clanged. Leah raised grateful eyes to her knight,
and the thing was done. For the rest of that day Aaron Kastrinsky sold
dates and figs at a reckless discount and dreamed of the fair oval of
a girl's face framed in a shawl no more scarlet than her lips, while
Leah's heart sang of a youth in a fur cap and a long coat who had been
able to "boss them awful boys."

Daily thereafter did Aaron Kastrinsky establish his gay green push-cart
outside the school door set apart for the very little boys and drive
a half hour's bustling trade ere the children were all housed. And
daily two naughty small boys were convoyed to the door by a red-shawled,
dark-eyed sister. Very slowly greetings grew from shy glance to shy
smile, from swift drooping of the lashes to swift rise of colour, from
gentle sweep of eyes to sustained regard, from formal good-morning to
protracted chats. But before this happy stage was reached the twins
decided that they no longer required safe conduct to the fountain of
knowledge, and that Leah's attendance covered them with ridicule in
the eyes of more independent spirits. But she refused to relax her
vigilance, nay, rather she increased it; for she began to force her
mutinous brothers to the synagogue on Sabbath mornings. The twins soon
came to associate the vision of Aaron Kastrinsky with the idea of
restraint and of stern virtue, for on the way to the synagogue he
walked by Leah's side--looking strangely incomplete without his green
push-cart--and drove them by the sheer force of his will to walk
decorously in front. Decorously, too, he marched them back again, and
stood idly talking to Leah at the steps of her tenement while the twins
escaped to their enjoyments.

When waiting milk-cans were thrown into cellars, when the wheels of
momentarily deserted wagons were loosened, when pushcarts disappeared,
when children bent on shopping were waylaid and robbed, when cats were
tortured, horses' manes clipped, windows broken, shop-keepers enraged,
babies frightened, and pit-falls set upon the stairs, the cry was
always, "Them Yonowsky devils." Leah could do nothing with them. Mr.
Yonowsky made no effort to control them, and Aaron Kastrinsky was not
always there. Not half, not a quarter as often as he wished, for Leah
promptly turned away from all his attempts to make her understand how
greatly she would gain in peace and comfort if she would but marry
him. They would move to a larger flat and he would manage the boys.
But Leah's view of life and marriage was tinged with no glory of
romance. She had no illusions, no ignorances, and she was afraid, she
told her suitor, afraid.

"But of what?" asked the puzzled Aaron. "Thou canst not be afraid of
me. Thou knowest how dear thou art to me. What canst thou fear?"

"I'm afraid of being married," was her ultimatum. She confessed that
she loved no one else--she had never, poor child, known anyone else
to love; she admitted the allurements of the larger flat and the strong
hand always ready for the twins, was delighted to go with him to
lectures at the Educational Alliance when her father could be aroused
to responsible charge of the twins, rejoiced when he prospered in the
world and exchanged the push-cart for a permanent fruit-stand--she
even assisted at its decoration--but to marry him she was afraid.
Yes, she liked him; yes, she would walk with him--and the twins--along
Grand Street in the early evening. Yes, she would wear her red dress
since he admired it; but to marry him--ah, no! Please, no! she was
afraid of being married.

Aaron was by birth and in his own country one of the learned class,
and he promptly set about supplementing Leah's neglected education.
She had lived so solitary a life that her Russian remained pure and
soft and was quite distinct from the mixture of Yiddish, German, English,
and slang which her neighbours spoke. English, which she read
easily, she spoke rarely and haltingly, and Jewish in a prettily
pedantic manner, learned from her mother, whose father had been a
Rabbi. Aaron lent her books in these three languages, which straightway
carried her into strange and glorious worlds. Occasionally the twins
stole and sold the books, but their enlightenment remained. To
supplement the reading he took her to lectures and to night schools,
and thus one evening they listened to an illustrated "talk" on
"Contagion and Its Causes." There had been an epidemic of smallpox in
the quarter and Panic was abroad. Parents who spoke no English fought
wildly with ambulance surgeons who spoke no Jewish, and refused to
entrust the sufferers to the care of the Board of Health. Many
disturbances resulted and the authorities arranged that, in all the
missions, night schools, and settlements of the East Side, reassuring
lecturers should spread abroad the folly of resistance, the joys of
hospital life, the surety of recovery in the arms of the board, with
a few remarks upon the sources of contagion.

Leah and Aaron listened to one of the most calming of these orators.
The lecturer spoke with such feeling--and such stereopticon slides--that
smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria seemed the "open
sesame" to bliss unutterable, and the source of these talismans rather
to be sought for diligently than shunned. "Didst hear?" Leah asked
Aaron as they went home. "For a redness on the skin one may stay in
bed for a week and rest."

"Ay, but one is sick," said Aaron sagely.

"Not if one goes where the gentleman said. One lies in bed for a
week--three weeks--and there be ladies who wait on one, and one
rests--all days one rests. And there be no twins. Think of it, Aaron!
rest and no twins!"

A few days later she climbed home after a morning's shopping to find
Algernon, heavy of eye and red of face, crouched near the locked door
with a whimper in his voice and a card in his hand.

"I'm got somethin'," he announced, with the pride of the invalid.

"Where didst get it?" asked Leah, automatically; she was accustomed
to brazen admission of guilt.

"Off of a boy at school."

"Thou wilt steal once too often," his sister admonished him. "Go now,
confess to Miss Bailey, and return what thou hast taken."

"The boy has it too," retorted Algernon. "It's a sickness--a taking
sickness; und comes a man und gives me a card und says I should come
by my house; I'm sick."

Leah gazed on the card in despairing envy. She had hopefully searched
her person for rash or redness, thinking thereby to achieve a ticket
to that promised land where beautiful ladies--as the stereopticon had
shown--sat graciously waving fans beside a smooth, white bed whereon
one lay and rested: only rested: quiet day after quiet day. There had
been no twins in her imaginings, yet here was Algernon already set
upon the way; Algernon, who would be naughty in that blissful place,
and who might even "talk sassy" to the beautiful ladies. Slow tears
of disappointment grew under Leah's heavy lids and splashed upon the
coveted ticket. And the doctor from the Board of Health, come to verify
the more superficial examination of his colleague, misguidedly launched
forth upon a resume of the reassuring lectures.

"You mustn't cry," he remonstrated. "It's only measles and he won't
be very sick. Why, you might keep him here, and I could send you a
nurse to show you how to take care of him if it weren't for that butcher
shop on the ground floor. But he'll be all right. Don't cry."

In a short space the house of Yonowsky was bereft of its more noisy
son, and peace reigned. Percival went lonely and early to bed. Leah
sat late on the steps with Aaron, and, on the next morning, Percival
duplicated the redness, the diagnosis, and the departure of his brother,
and Leah came into her own.

Then were the days wondrous long. There was time for all the pleasures
from which she had been so long debarred. Time to read, time to sew,
time to pay and to receive shy, short morning calls, time to scrub and
polish until her room shone, time for experiments in cookery, time to
stretch her father's wages to undreamed-of lengths, even time so to
cheer and wheedle Mr. Yonowsky that she dared to ask his permission
to bring Aaron up to her spotless domain. And Aaron, with a thumping
of the hearts not due entirely to the height and steepness of the
stairs, came formally to call upon his young divinity. The visit was
a great success. Mr. Yonowsky blossomed under the sun of Aaron's
deference and learning into an expansiveness which amazed his daughter,
and the men discussed the law, the scriptures, the election, the Czar,
nihilism, socialism, the tariff, and the theatre. But here Mr. Yonowsky
lapsed into gloom. He had not visited a theatre for seven years--not
since his wife's death.

"And Miss Leah?" Aaron questioned.

"Never, oh, never!" she breathed resignedly, yet so longingly that
Aaron then and there arranged that he and she and Mr. Yonowsky should
visit the Thalia Theatre on the following night. And Leah, with the
glad and new assurance that the boys were safe, fell into happy
devisings of a suitable array. When young Kastrinsky left after formal
and prescribed adieus to his hostess, he dragged his host out to listen
to a campaign speech.

During the weeks that followed, even Mr. Yonowsky came to see the sweet
uses of the Board of Health and to ponder long and deeply upon the
nature of the "taking sickness." No longer forced to do perpetual,
though ineffective, sentinel duty, he gradually resumed his place in
the world of men and spent placid evenings at the synagogue, the
Educational Alliance, the theatre, and the East Side Democratic Union.
Leah bore him company at the theatre when she might, and Aaron followed
Leah until parental pride swelled high under Mr. Yonowsky's green
Prince Albert coat. For well he saw the looks of admiration which were
turned upon his daughter as she sat by his side and consumed cold pink
lemonade.

He received two of the roundabout proposals which etiquette demands,
and began to gather a dowry for Leah and to recall extraordinary
outstanding securities to that end. But, before these things were
accomplished, his sons and his troubles returned upon him. With renewed
energy, stimulated imagination, and enriched profanity, "them Yonowsky
devils" came home, and their reign of mischief set in afresh.

They had always been unruly; they were utterly unmanageable now. Daily
was Leah summoned to the big red school-house by the long-suffering
Miss Bailey, and nightly was Mr. Yonowsky forced to cancel engagements
at club or synagogue and to stay at home to "explanation them boys"
to outraged neighbours.

Aaron could still control them, but he was never brought upstairs now.
How could Leah expect him to enjoy conversations carried on amid the
yells of Algernon and Percival in freedom, or their shrieks in durance?

The twins came home one noontime full of gossip and excitement. They
clamoured over their cabbage soup that a classmate of theirs, one
Isidore Belchatosky, had "a sickness--a taking sickness, what he took
from off his sister Sadie."

"Is it a bad sickness?" asked the father.

"Somethin' fierce!" Percival assured him. "Pimples stands on his face,
und he _says_ he's got 'em everywheres, but I guess maybe he lies.
He says it's a chicken sickness what he has. Mit pimples everywheres!"

"You don't know no names from sicknesses," Algernon broke in
contemptuously. "It ain't the chicken sickness. It's the chicken puffs."

"Where is his house?" asked Leah eagerly. And she joyously despatched
the twins with kind inquiries and proffers to sit with the sufferer;
for had not the prophesying gentleman explained that there was no surer
way of attaining to hospital tickets than by speech and contact with
one who had already "arrived"? And Algernon and Percival, spurred on
by the allurement of the "pimples everywheres," pressed past all
barriers and outposts until they feasted their eyes upon the neatly
spotted Izzie, who proudly proved his boast of the "everywheres" and
the exceeding puffiness of the chicken puffs.

Two weeks later the little emissaries of love were in sorry case. The
"pimples everywheres" appeared, the ambulance reappeared, the twins
disappeared. The cleaning and polishing were resumed, Aaron invited
to supper, Mr. Yonowsky pledged to deliver a lecture on "The Southern
Negro and the Ballot," and a stew of the strongest elements set to
simmer on the stove.

Leah had learned the path to freedom and trod it with a light heart.
Algernon and Percival enjoyed a long succession of diseases, contagious
and infectious, and each attack meant a holiday of varying but always
of considerable length. Under ordinary conditions Leah might have been
forced to nurse her brothers through their less serious disorders, but
there was a butcher shop on the ground floor of the Yonowsky tenement,
and the by-laws of the Board of Health decreed that, such being the
case, the children should be removed for nearly all the ills to which
young and ill-nourished flesh is heir.

"Them Yonowsky devils" became only visitors to their native block, but
since they returned after each retirement more unruly and outrageous,
they were not deeply mourned. Only the butcher objected, because his
store was occasionally quarantined when Leah had achieved some very
virulent excuse for summoning the ambulance and shipping her
responsibilities. Mr. Yonowsky was puzzled but grateful, and Aaron was
grateful too.

Month after month went by and the twins had exhausted the lists of the
lecturer and had enjoyed several other ailments, when Leah and her
father went to bring them home from their typhoid-fever holiday.

"You've been having a hard time with these boys," the man at the desk
said kindly. "The worst luck I ever knew in the many years I've been
here. But they're all right now. They've had everything on the list
except water on the brain and elephantiasis, and they can't get them."

"But some what they had they could some more get," Leah suggested in
the English she so rarely used.

"I think not," the official answered cheeringly. "They hardly ever do.
No, I guess you'll be able to keep them at home now. Good luck to you!"

But it was bad luck, the worst of luck. Mr. Yonowsky's public spirit
died within his breast; Leah's coquetry vanished before a future
unrelieved by visits from the black and friendly ambulance, and when
Aaron climbed the well-known stairs that evening he heard, while he
was yet two floors short of his destination, the shrieks of the twins,
the smashing of crockery, and the grumbling of the neighbours. Suddenly
a little figure darted upon him and Leah was in his arms.

"Aaron," she sobbed. "Oh, Aaron, mine heart it breaks. There ain't no
more taking sicknesses in all the world. So says the gentleman."

"My golden one," said Aaron, who was a bit of a philosopher; "all good
things come to an end except only Love. And the twins have had taking
sicknesses in great and unheard-of numbers."

"But now they are more than ever bad. I can do nothing with them and
I am afraid of them. In hospitals, where one is very happy, one grows
very big, and the twins are no longer little boys."

"If you marry me--" Aaron began.

"You will love me always?"

"Yea, mine gold."

"And for me you will boss them twins?"

"Yea, verily, for thee I will boss the twins."

And the betrothal of Leah Yonowsky to Aaron Kastrinsky was signed and
sealed immediately.




A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR A LADY


It was the week before Christmas, and the First-Reader Class had,
almost to a man, decided on the gifts to be lavished on "Teacher." She
was quite unprepared for any such observance on the part of her small
adherents, for her first study of the roll-book had shown her that its
numerous Jacobs, Isidores, and Rachels belonged to a class to which
Christmas Day was much as other days. And so she went serenely on her
way, all unconscious of the swift and strict relation between her
manner and her chances. She was, for instance, the only person in the
room who did not know that her criticism of Isidore Belchatosky's hands
and face cost her a tall "three for ten cents" candlestick and a plump
box of candy.

But Morris Mogilewsky, whose love for Teacher was far greater than the
combined loves of all the other children, had as yet no present to
bestow. That his "kind feeling" should be without proof when the lesser
loves of Isidore Wishnewsky, Sadie Gonorowsky, and Bertha Binderwitz
were taking the tangible but surprising forms which were daily exhibited
to his confidential gaze, was more than he could bear. The knowledge
saddened all his hours and was the more maddening because it could in
no wise be shared by Teacher, who noticed his altered bearing and tried
with all sorts of artful beguilements to make him happy and at ease.
But her efforts served only to increase his unhappiness and his love.
And he loved her! Oh, how he loved her! Since first his dreading eyes
had clung for a breath's space to her "like man's shoes" and had then
crept timidly upward past a black skirt, a "from silk" apron, a
red "jumper," and "from gold" chain to her "light face," she had been
mistress of his heart of hearts. That was more than three months ago.
And well he remembered the day!

His mother had washed him horribly, and had taken him into the big,
red school-house, so familiar from the outside, but so full of unknown
terrors within. After his dusty little shoes had stumbled over the
threshold he had passed from ordeal to ordeal until at last he was
torn in mute and white-faced despair from his mother's skirts.

He was then dragged through long halls and up tall stairs by a large
boy, who spoke to him disdainfully as "greenie," and cautioned him as
to the laying down softly and taking up gently of those poor dusty
shoes, so that his spirit was quite broken and his nerves were all
unstrung when he was pushed into a room full of bright sunshine and
of children who laughed at his frightened little face. The sunshine
smote his timid eyes, the laughter smote his timid heart, and he turned
to flee. But the door was shut, the large boy gone, and despair took
him for its own.

[Illustration: "MY POOR LITTLE CHAP, YOU MUSTN'T CRY LIKE, THAT"]

[Illustration: DISMISSED WITH THE COMMON HERD AT THREE O'CLOCK]

Down upon the floor he dropped, and wailed, and wept, and kicked. It
was then that he heard, for the first time the voice which now he
loved. A hand was forced between his aching body and the floor, and
the voice said: "Why, my dear little chap, you mustn't cry like that.
What's the matter?"

The hand was gentle and the question kind, and these, combined with
a faint perfume suggestive of drug stores and barber shops--but nicer
than either--made him uncover his hot little face. Kneeling beside him
was a lady, and he forced his eyes to that perilous ascent; from shoes
to skirt, from skirt to jumper, from jumper to face, they trailed in
dread uncertainty, but at the face they stopped. They had found--rest.

Morris allowed himself to be gathered into the lady's arms and held
upon her knee, and when his sobs no longer rent the very foundations
of his pink and wide-spread tie, he answered her question in a voice
as soft as his eyes, and as gently sad.

"I ain't so big, und I don't know where is my mamma."

So, having cast his troubles on the shoulders of the lady, he had added
his throbbing head to the burden, and from that safe retreat had enjoyed
his first day at school immensely.

Thereafter he had been the first to arrive every morning, and the last
to leave every afternoon; and under the care of Teacher, his liege
lady, he had grown in wisdom and love and happiness. But the greatest
of these was love. And now, when the other boys and girls were planning
surprises and gifts of price for Teacher, his hands were as empty as
his heart was full. Appeal to his mother met with denial prompt and
energetic.

"For what you go und make, over Christmas, presents? You ain't no
Krisht; you should better have no kind feelings over Krishts, neither;
your papa could to have a mad."

"Teacher ain't no Krisht," said Morris stoutly; "all the other fellows
buys her presents, und I'm loving mit her too; it's polite I gives her
presents the while I'm got such a kind feeling over her."

"Well, we ain't got no money for buy nothings," said Mrs. Mogilewsky
sadly. "No money, und your papa, he has all times a scare he shouldn't
to get no more, the while the boss"--and here followed incomprehensible,
but depressing, financial details, until the end of the interview found
Morris and his mother sobbing and rocking in one another's arms. So
Morris was helpless, his mother poor, and Teacher all unknowing.

And the great day, the Friday before Christmas came, and the school
was, for the first half hour, quite mad. Doors opened suddenly and
softly to admit small persons, clad in wondrous ways and bearing
wondrous parcels. Room 18, generally so placid and so peaceful, was
a howling wilderness full of brightly coloured, quickly changing groups
of children, all whispering, all gurgling, and all hiding queer bundles.
A newcomer invariably caused a diversion; the assembled multitude,
athirst for novelty, fell upon him and clamoured for a glimpse of his
bundle and a statement of its price.

Teacher watched in dumb amaze. What could be the matter with the
children, she wondered. They could not have guessed the shrouded
something in the corner to be a Christmas-tree. What made them behave
so queerly, and why did they look so strange? They seemed to have grown
stout in a single night, and Teacher, as she noted this, marvelled
greatly. The explanation was simple, though it came in alarming form.
The sounds of revelry were pierced by a long, shrill yell, and a pair
of agitated legs sprang suddenly into view between two desks. Teacher,
rushing to the rescue, noted that the legs formed the unsteady stem
of an upturned mushroom of brown flannel and green braid, which she
recognized as the outward seeming of her cherished Bertha Binderwitz;
and yet, when the desks were forced to disgorge their prey, the legs
restored to their normal position were found to support a fat child--and
Bertha was best described as "skinny"--in a dress of the Stuart tartan
tastefully trimmed with purple. Investigation proved that Bertha's
accumulative taste in dress was an established custom. In nearly all
cases the glory of holiday attire was hung upon the solid foundation
of every-day clothes as bunting is hung upon a building. The habit was
economical of time, and produced a charming embonpoint.

Teacher, too, was more beautiful than ever. Her dress was blue, and
"very long down, like a lady," with bands of silk and scraps of lace
distributed with the eye of art. In her hair she wore a bow of what
Sadie Gonorowsky, whose father "worked by fancy goods," described as
black "from plush ribbon--costs ten cents."

Isidore Belchatosky, relenting, was the first to lay tribute before
Teacher. He came forward with a sweet smile and a tall candlestick--the
candy had gone to its long home--and Teacher, for a moment, could not
be made to understand that all that length of bluish-white china was
really hers "for keeps."

"It's to-morrow holiday," Isidore assured her; "and we gives you
presents, the while we have a kind feeling. Candlesticks could to cost
twenty-five cents."

"It's a lie. Three for ten," said a voice in the background, but Teacher
hastened to respond to Isidore's test of her credulity:

"Indeed, they could. This candlestick could have cost fifty cents, and
it's just what I want. It is very good of you to bring me a present."

"You're welcome," said Isidore, retiring; and then, the ice being
broken, the First-Reader Class in a body rose to cast its gifts on
Teacher's desk, and its arms around Teacher's neck.

Nathan Horowitz presented a small cup and saucer; Isidore Applebaum
bestowed a large calendar for the year before last; Sadie Gonorowsky
brought a basket containing a bottle of perfume, a thimble, and a
bright silk handkerchief; Sarah Schrodsky offered a pen-wiper and a
yellow celluloid collar-button, and Eva Kidansky gave an elaborate
nasal douche, under the pleasing delusion that it was an atomizer.

Once more sounds of grief reached Teacher's ears. Rushing again to the
rescue, she threw open the door and came upon Woe personified. Eva
Gonorowsky, her hair in wildest disarray, her stocking fouled,
ungartered, and down-gyved to her ankle, appeared before her teacher.
She bore all the marks of Hamlet's excitement, and many more, including
a tear-stained little face and a gilt saucer clasped to a panting
breast.

"Eva, my dearest Eva, what's happened to you _now_?" asked Teacher,
for the list of ill-chances which had befallen this one of her charges
was very long. And Eva's wail was that a boy, a very big boy, had
stolen her golden cup "what I had for you by present," and had left
her only the saucer and her undying love to bestow.

Before Eva's sobs had quite yielded to Teacher's arts, Jacob Spitsky
pressed forward with a tortoise-shell comb of terrifying aspect and
hungry teeth, and an air showing forth a determination to adjust it
in its destined place. Teacher meekly bowed her head; Jacob forced his
offering into her long-suffering hair, and then retired with the
information, "Costs fifteen cents, Teacher," and the courteous
phrase--by etiquette prescribed--"Wish you health to wear it." He was
plainly a hero, and was heard remarking to less favoured admirers that
"Teacher's hair is awful softy, and smells off of perfumery."

Here a big boy, a very big boy, entered hastily. He did not belong to
Room 18, but he had long known Teacher. He had brought her a present;
he wished her a Merry Christmas. The present, when produced, proved
to be a pretty gold cup, and Eva Gonorowsky, with renewed emotion,
recognized the boy as her assailant and the cup as her property. Teacher
was dreadfully embarrassed; the boy not at all so. His policy was
simple and entire denial, and in this he persevered, even after Eva's
saucer had unmistakably proclaimed its relationship to the cup.

Meanwhile the rush of presentation went steadily on. Other cups and
saucers came in wild profusion. The desk was covered with them, and
their wrappings of purple tissue paper required a monitor's whole
attention. The soap, too, became urgently perceptible. It was of all
sizes, shapes and colours, but of uniform and dreadful power of perfumes
Teacher's eyes filled with tears--of gratitude--as each new piece or
box was pressed against her nose, and Teacher's mind was full of wonder
as to what she could ever do with all of it. Bottles of perfume vied
with one another and with the all-pervading soap until the air was
heavy and breathing grew labourious. But pride swelled the hearts of
the assembled multitude. No other Teacher had so many helps to the
toilet. None other was so beloved.

Teacher's aspect was quite changed, and the "blue long down like a
lady dress" was almost hidden by the offerings she had received. Jacob's
comb had two massive and bejewelled rivals in the "softy hair." The
front of the dress, where aching or despondent heads were wont to rest,
glittered with campaign buttons of American celebrities, beginning
with James G. Blaine and extending into modern history as far as Patrick
Divver, Admiral Dewey, and Captain Dreyfus. Outside the blue belt was
a white one, nearly clean, and bearing in "sure 'nough golden words"
the curt, but stirring, invitation, "Remember the Maine." Around the
neck were three chaplets of beads, wrought by chubby fingers and
embodying much love, while the waist-line was further adorned by tiny
and beribboned aprons. Truly, it was a day of triumph.

When the waste-paper basket had been twice filled with wrappings and
twice emptied; when order was emerging out of chaos; when the
Christmas-tree had been disclosed and its treasures distributed, a
timid hand was laid on Teacher's knee and a plaintive voice whispered,
"Say, Teacher, I got something for you;" and Teacher turned quickly
to see Morris, her dearest boy charge, with his poor little body showing
quite plainly between his shirt-waist buttons and through the gashes
he called pockets. This was his ordinary costume, and the funds of the
house of Mogilewsky were evidently unequal to an outer layer of finery.

"Now, Morris dear," said Teacher, "you shouldn't have troubled to get
me a present; you know you and I are such good friends that--"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an," Morris interrupted, in a bewitching and rising
inflection of his soft and plaintive voice. "I know you got a kind
feeling by me, and I couldn't to tell even how I got a kind feeling
by you. Only it's about that kind feeling I should give you a present.
I didn't"--with a glance at the crowded desk--"I didn't to have no
soap nor no perfumery, and my mamma she couldn't to buy none by the
store; but, Teacher, I'm got something awful nice for you by present."

"And what is it, deary?" asked the already rich and gifted young person.
"What is my new present?"

"Teacher, it's like this: I don't know; I ain't so big like I could
to know"--and, truly, God pity him! he was passing small--"it ain't
for boys--it's for ladies. Over yesterday on the night comes my papa
to my house, und he gives my mamma the present. Sooner she looks on
it, sooner she has a awful glad; in her eyes stands tears, und she
says, like that--out of Jewish--'Thanks,' un' she kisses my papa a
kiss. Und my papa, _how_ he is polite! he says--out of Jewish
too--'You're welcome, all right,' un' he kisses my mamma a kiss. So
my mamma, she sets und looks on the present, und all the time she looks
she has a glad over it. Und I didn't to have no soap, so you could to
have the present."

"But did your mother say I might?"

"Teacher, no ma'an; she didn't say like that, und she didn't to say
_not_ like that. She didn't to know. But it's for ladies, un' Ididn't to
have no soap. You could to look on it. It ain't for boys."

And here Morris opened a hot little hand and disclosed a tightly folded
pinkish paper. As Teacher read it he watched her with eager, furtive
eyes, dry and bright, until hers grew suddenly moist, when his promptly
followed suit. As she looked down at him, he made his moan once more:

"It's for ladies, und I didn't to have no soap."

"But, Morris, dear," cried Teacher unsteadily, laughing a little, and
yet not far from tears, "this is ever so much nicer than soap--a
thousand times better than perfume; and you're quite right, it is for
ladies, and I never had one in all my life before. I am so very
thankful."

"You're welcome, all right. That's how my papa says; it's polite," said
Morris proudly. And proudly he took his place among the very
little boys, and loudly he joined in the ensuing song. For the rest
of that exciting day he was a shining point of virtue in the rest of
that confused class. And at three o'clock he was at Teacher's desk
again, carrying on the conversation as if there had been no
interruption.

"Und my mamma," he said insinuatingly--"she kisses my papa a kiss."

"Well?" said Teacher.

"Well," said Morris, "you ain't never kissed me a kiss, und I seen how
you kissed Eva Gonorowsky. I'm loving mit you too. Why don't you never
kiss me a kiss?"

"Perhaps," suggested Teacher mischievously, "perhaps it ain't for
boys."

But a glance at her "light face," with its crown of surprising combs,
reassured him.

"Teacher, yiss ma'an; it's for boys," he cried as he felt her arms
about him, and saw that in her eyes, too, "stands tears."

"It's polite you kisses me a kiss over that for ladies' present."

Late that night Teacher sat in her pretty room--for she was,
unofficially, a greatly pampered young person--and reviewed her
treasures. She saw that they were very numerous, very touching, very
whimsical, and very precious. But above all the rest she cherished a
frayed and pinkish paper, rather crumpled and a little soiled. For it
held the love of a man and a woman and a little child, and the magic
of a home, for Morris Mogilewsky's Christmas present for ladies was
the receipt for a month's rent for a room on the top floor of a Monroe
Street tenement.




LOVE AMONG THE BLACKBOARDS



An organized government requires a cabinet, and, during the first weeks
of her reign over Room 18, Miss Bailey set about providing herself
with aides and advisors. She made, naturally, some fatal and expensive
mistakes, as when she entrusted the class pencils to the care of one
of the Yonowsky twins who, promptly falling ill of scarlet fever and
imparting it to his brother, reduced the First-Reader Class to writing
with coloured chalk.

But gradually from the rank and file of candidates, from the
well-meaning but clumsy; from the competent but dishonest; from the
lazy and from the rash, she selected three loyal and devoted men to
share her task of ruling. They were Morris Mogilewsky, Prime Minister
and Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl; Nathan Spiderwitz, Councillor of
the Exchequer and Monitor of Window Boxes; and Patrick Brennan,
Commander-in-Chief of the Forces and Leader of the Line.

The members of this cabinet, finding themselves raised to such high
places by the pleasure of their sovereign, kept watchful eyes upon
her. For full well they knew that cruelest of all the laws of the Board
of Education, which decrees: "That the marriage of a female teacher
shall constitute resignation." This ruling had deprived them of a
Kindergarten teacher of transcendent charm and had made them as watchful
of Miss Bailey as a bevy of maiden aunts could have been. Losing her
they would lose love and power, and love and power are sweet.

Morris was the first to discover definite grounds for uneasiness. He
met his cherished Miss Bailey walking across Grand Street on a rainy
morning, and the umbrella which was protecting her beloved head was
held by a tall stranger in a long and baggy coat. After circling
incredulously about this tableau, Morris dashed off to report to his
colleagues. He found Patrick and Nathan in the midst of an exciting
game of craps, but his pattering feet warned them of danger, so they
pocketed their dice and turned to hear his news.

"Say," he panted; "I seen Teacher mit a man."

"No!" said Patrick, aghast.

"It's a lie!" cried Nathan; "it's a lie!"

"No; it's no lie," said Morris, with a sob half of breathlessness and
half of sorrow; "I seen her for sure. Und the man carries umbrellas
over her mit loving looks."

"Ah, g'wan," drawled Patrick; "you're crazy. You don't know what you're
talking about."

"Sure do I," cried Morris. "I had once a auntie what was loving mit
a awful stylish salesman--he's now floorwalkers--und I see how they
makes."

"Well," said Patrick, "I had a sister Mary and she married the milkman,
so I know, too. But umbrellas doesn't mean much."

"But the loving looks," Morris insisted. "My auntie makes such looks
on the salesman--he's now floorwalkers--und sooner she marries mit
him."

"Say, Patrick," suggested Nathan; "I'll tell you what to do. You ask
her if she's goin' to get married."

"Naw," said Patrick. "Let Morris ask her. She'd tell him before she'd
tell any of us. She's been soft on him ever since Christmas. Say,
Morris, do you hear? You've got to ask Teacher if she's going to get
married."

"Oo-o-oh! I dassent. It ain't polite how you says," cried Morris in
his shocked little voice. "It _ain't_ polite you asks like that.
It's fierce."

"Well, you've got to do it, anyway," said Patrick darkly, "and you've
got to do it soon, and you've got to let us hear you."

"It's fierce," protested Morris, but he was overruled by the dominant
spirit of Patrick Brennan, that grandson of the kings of Munster and
son of the policeman on the beat. His opportunity found him on the
very next morning. Isidore Wishnewsky, the gentlest of gentle children,
came to school wearing his accustomed air of melancholy shot across
with a tender pride. His subdued "Good morning" was accompanied with
much strenuous exertion directed, apparently, to the removal and
exhibition of a portion of his spine. After much wriggling he paused
long enough to say:

"Teacher, what you think? I'm got a present for you," and then
recommenced his search in another layer of his many flannels. His
efforts being at length crowned with success, he drew forth and spread
before Teacher's admiring eyes a Japanese paper napkin.

"My sister," he explained. "She gets it to a weddinge."

"Oh, Isidore," cried the flattered Teacher; "it's very pretty, isn't
it?"

"Teacher--yiss ma'an," gurgled Isidore. "It's stylish. You could to
look on how stands birds on it and flowers. Mine sister she gives it
to me und I gives it to you. _I_ don't need it. She gives me all
times something the while she's got such a kind feelin' over me. She
goes all times on weddinges. Most all her younge lady friends gettin'
married; ain't it funny?"

At the fateful word "married," the uneasy cabinet closed in about
Teacher. Their three pairs of eyes clung to her face as Isidore
repeated:

"All gettin' married. Ain't it funny?"

"Well, no, dear," answered Teacher musingly. "You know nearly all young
ladies do it."

Patrick took a pin from Teacher's desk and kneeled to tie his
shoe-string. When he rose the point of the pin projected half an inch
beyond the frayed toe of his shoe, and he was armed. Morris was most
evidently losing courage--he was indeed trying to steal away when
Patrick pressed close beside him and held him to his post.

"Teacher," said Isidore suddenly, as a dreadful thought struck him, "be
you a lady or be you a girl?"

And Teacher, being of Hibernian ancestry, answered one question with
another:

"Which do you think, Isidore?"

"Well," Isidore answered, "I don't know be you a forsure lady or be
you a forsure girl. You wears your hair so tucked up und your dress
so long down like you was a lady, but you laffs und tells us stories
like you was a girl. I don't know."

Clearly this was Morris's opening. Patrick pierced his soul with a
glance of scorn and simultaneously buried the pin in his quaking leg.
Thus encouraged, Morris rushed blindly into the conversation with:

"Say, Teacher, Miss Bailey, be _you_ goin' to get married?" and then
dropped limply against her shoulder.

The question was not quite new to Teacher and, as she bestowed Morris
more comfortably on her knee, she pondered once again. She knew that,
for the present, her lines had fallen in very pleasant places, and she
felt no desire to change to pastures new. And yet--and yet--. The
average female life is long, and a Board, however thoughtful as to
salary and pension, is an impersonal lord and master, and remote withal.
So she answered quite simply, with her cheek against the boy's:

"Well, perhaps so, Morris. Perhaps I shall, some day."

"Teacher, no ma'an, Miss Bailey!" wailed the Monitor of the Gold-Fish.
"Don't you go and get married mit nobody. So you do you couldn't be
Teacher by us no more, and you're a awful nice teacher by little boys.
You ain't _too_ big. Und say, we'd feel terrible bad the while you goes
and gets married mit somebody--terrible bad."

"Should you really, now?" asked Teacher, greatly pleased. "Well, dear,
I too should be lonely without you."

Here Isidore Wishnewsky, who considered this conversation as his
cherished own, and saw it being torn from him, determined to outdo the
favoured Morris as a squire of dames.

"Teacher, yiss ma'an," he broke in. "We'd all feel terrible the while
we ain't got you by teacher. All the boys und all the girls they says
like this--it's the word in the yard--we ain't never had a teacher
smells so nice like you."

While Teacher was in the lenient mood, resulting from this astounding
tribute, Nathan forged yet another chain for her securing.

"Teacher," said he, "you wouldn't never go and get married mit nobody
'out saying nothing to somebody, would you?"

"Indeed, no, my dear," Miss Bailey assured him. "When I marry, you and
Patrick and Morris shall be ushers--monitors, you know. Now are you
happy, you funny little chaps?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an," Morris sighed, as the bell rang sharply, and
the aloof and formal exercise of the assembly room began.

Some days later Teacher arranged to go to a reception, and as she did
not care to return to her home between work and play, she appeared at
school in rather festive array. Room 18 was delighted with its
transformed ruler, but to the board of monitors this glory of raiment
brought nothing but misery. Every twist in the neat coiffure, every
fold of the pretty dress, every rustle of the invisible silk, every
click of the high heels, meant the coming abdication of Teacher and
the disbanding of her cabinet. Just so had Patrick's sister Mary looked
on the day she wed the milkman. Just such had been the outward aspect
of Morris's auntie on the day of her union to the promising young
salesman who was now a floorwalker and Morris's Uncle Ikey.

Momentarily they expected some word of farewell--perhaps even an
ice-cream party--but Teacher made no sign. They decided that she was
reserving her last words for their private ear and were greatly
disconcerted to find themselves turned out with the common herd at
three o'clock. With heavy hearts they followed the example of Mary's
little lamb and waited patiently about till Teacher did appear. When
she came she was more wonderful than ever, in a long and billowy boa
and a wide and billowy hat. She had seemed in a breathless hurry while
up in Room 18, but now she stood quite placidly in a group of her small
adherents on the highest of the school-house steps. And the cabinet,
waiting gloomily apart, only muttered, "I told ye so," and "It must
be a awful kind feeling," when the tall stranger came swinging upon
the scene. When Teacher's eyes fell upon him she began to force her
way through her clinging court, and when he was half way up the steps
she was half way down. As they met he drew from his pocket a hand and
the violets it held and Teacher was still adjusting the flowers in her
jacket when she passed her lurking staff. "I didn't expect you at all,"
she was saying. "You know it was not a really definite arrangement,
and men hate receptions."

A big voice replied in a phrase which Morris identified as having been
prominent in the repertoire of the enamoured salesman--now a
floorwalker--and Teacher with her companion turned to cross the street.
Her heels clicked for yet a moment and the deserted cabinet knew that
all was over.

The gloom obscuring Patrick's spirit on that evening was of so deep
a dye that Mrs. Brennan diagnosed it as the first stage of "a
consumption." She administered simple remedies and warm baths with
perseverance, but without effect. And more potent to cure than bath
or bottle was the sight of Teacher on the next morning in her accustomed
clothes and place.

The Board of Monitors had hardly recovered from this panic when another
alarming symptom appeared. Miss Bailey began to watch for letters, and
large envelopes began to reward her watchfulness. Daily was Patrick
sent to the powers that were to demand a letter, and daily he carried
one, and a sorely heavy heart, back to his sovereign. In exactly the
same sweetly insistent way had he been sent many a time and oft to
seek tidings of the laggard milkman. His colleagues, when he laid these
facts before them, were of the opinion that things looked very dark
for Teacher. Said Nathan:

"You know how she says we should be monitors on her weddinge? Well,
it could to be lies. She marries maybe already."

Patrick promptly knocked the Monitor of Window Boxes down upon the
rough asphalt of the yard and kicked him.

"Miss Bailey's no sneak," he cried hotly. "If she was married she'd
just as lief go and tell."

"Well," Morris began, "I had once a auntie--"

"Your auntie makes me sick," snapped Patrick. But Morris went on quite
undisturbedly:

"I had once a auntie und she had awful kind feelings over a stylish
floorwalker, und he was loving mit her. So-o-oh! They marries! Und
they don't say nothings to nobody. On'y the stylish floor walker he
writes on my auntie whole bunches of lovin' letters."

"She ain't married," Patrick reiterated. "She ain't."

"Well, she will be," muttered Nathan vindictively. "Und the new teacher
will lick you the while you fights. It's fierce how you make me biles
on my bones. Think shame."

When the ruffled Monitor of the Window Boxes had been soothed by the
peaceful Guardian of the Gold-Fish, the cabinet held council. Nathan
suggested that it might be possible to bribe the interloper. They would
give him their combined wealth and urge him to turn his eyes upon Miss
Blake, whose room was across the hall. She was very big and would do
excellently well for him, whereas she was entirely too long and too
wide for them.

Morris maintained that Teacher might be held by gratitude. A list
should be made out, and, each in turn, a child a day, should give her
a present.

Patrick listened to these ideas in deep and restive disgust. He urged
instant and copious bloodshed. His big brother's gang could "let
daylight into the dude" with enjoyment and despatch. They would watch
him ceaselessly and they would track him down.

The watching was an easy matter, for Teacher, in common with the
majority of rulers, lived much in the public eye. The stranger was
often detected prowling in her vicinity. He even began to bring her
to school in the mornings, and on these occasions there were always
violets in her coat. He used to appear at luncheon time and vanish
with her. He used to come in the afternoon and have tea in Room 18
with two other teachers and with Teacher. The antagonism of the Monitor
of Gold Fish became so marked that Miss Bailey was forced to
remonstrate.

"Morris, dear," she began one afternoon, when they were alone together,
"you were very rude to Doctor Ingraham yesterday. I can't allow you
to stay here with me if you're going to behave so badly. You sulked
horribly and you slammed the door against his foot. Of course it was
an accident, but how would you feel, Morris, if you had hurt him?"

"Glad," said the Monitor of the Gold-Fish savagely. "Glad."

"Morris! What do you mean by saying such a thing? I'm ashamed of you.
Why should you want to hurt a friend of mine?"

"Don't you be friends mit him!" cried Morris, deserting his fish and
throwing himself upon his teacher. "Don't you do it, Teacher Missis
Bailey. He ain't no friends for a lady." And then, in answer to
Teacher's stare of blank surprise, he went on:

"My mamma she seen him by your side und she says--I got to tell you
in whispering how she says."

Teacher bent her head and Morris whispered in an awe-struck voice:

"My mamma says she like that: 'He could to be a Krisht,'" and then
drew back to study Teacher's consternation. But she seemed quite calm.
Perhaps she had already faced the devastating fact, for she said:

"Yes, I know he's a Christian. I'm not afraid of them. Are you?"

"Teacher, no ma'an, Missis Bailey, I ain't got no scare over Krishts,
on'y they ain't no friends for ladies. My papa says like that on my
auntie, und my auntie she's married now mit a stylish floorwalker.
We'm got a Krisht in our house for boarder, so I know. But _you_
couldn't to know 'bout Krishts."

"Yes, I do. They're very nice people."

"No ma'an," said Morris gently. And then still more courteously: "It's
a lie. You couldn't to know about Krishts."

"But I do know all about them, Morris dear. I'm a Christian."

Again Morris remembered his manners. Again he replied in his courtly
phrase:

"It's a lie." As he said it, with a bewitching rising inflection, it
was almost a caress. "It's a lie. Teacher fools. You couldn't to be
no Krisht. You ain't got no looks off of Krishts."

Teacher was mildly surprised. She was as Irish as Patrick Brennan and,
in her own way, she looked it. Truly her eyes were brown, but the face
and the faith of her fathers were still strongly hers. Morris,
meanwhile, examined his sovereign with admiring eyes. He could well
understand the heart of that Krisht, for Teacher was very beautiful
and of splendid array. Her jumper was red, with golden buttons, and
her collar was white, and her hair was soft, with combs. And she had
a light face and a little bit of nose and teeth. Her apron was from
silk with red ribbons and red flowers, and she had like man's-shoes and
a watch. This vision of feminine perfection was bestowing time and
smiles on him. She was actually appealing to his judgment.

"Not look like a Christian?" she was saying. "Well, then, Morris, what
do I look like?"

And Morris, ever going straight to the point, replied: "You looks like
a stylish Sheeny," and waited for this intoxicating praise to bring
blushes to the light face he loved. It brought the blushes, but they
were even redder and hotter than he had expected. There was also a
gasp on which he had not counted and a queer flash in the brown eyes.

"Morris," said Teacher, "Morris, did you ever see a Sheeny with a nose
like mine?"

Morris raised his head from the red jumper, climbed off the from-silk
apron and solemnly contemplated the little bit of nose. The truth broke
over him in sickening waves. The star of his life had set; his doll
was stuffed with sawdust; his idol had feet of clay; his light-faced
lady was a Christian. And yet she was his teacher and greatly to be
loved, so he bore the knowledge, for her dear sake, as bravely as he
could. He returned to the from-silk apron, wound a short arm round the
white collar, and sobbed:

"Teacher, yiss ma'an, you'm got a Krisht nose. But don't you care, no
one couldn't never to know like you ain't a for sure Sheeny the while
you got such terrible Sheeny eyes. Oh, but they couldn't never to think
you're a Krisht. Und say, don't you have a frightened. I wouldn't never
to tell nobody. Never. I makes a swear over it. I kiss up to God. I
hopes I drops down if I tells."

At the end of a month the high heels and the festive raiment appeared
again, and the staff knew that the time for action had really come.
They must bring the Krisht to terms before he should see Teacher in
her present and irresistible array. He was always first at the trysting
place, and there they would have speech with him. They arranged to
escape from Room 18 before three o'clock. The Commander-in-Chief feigned
a nose-bleed, the Prime Minister developed an inward agony, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, after some moments of indecision, boldly
plucked out a tottering tooth and followed--bloody but triumphant--in
their wake. They found the enemy just as they had expected, and Morris,
being again elected spokesman, stepped forward and took him by his
dastard hand. The adversary yielded, thinking that Teacher had been
forced to greater caution. The Commander-in-Chief and the Chancellor
followed close behind, they having consented, in view of the enormous
issues involved, to act as scouts. Around the corner they went into
a dark and narrow alley, and, when they had reached a secluded spot
between the high wall of the school and the blank windows of a recently
burned tenement house, Morris began:

"Teacher don't wants to go on the party mit you the while she ain't
got no more that kind feeling over you."

"What?" cried the astonished Doctor Ingraham.

"She don't wants to be married mit you."

"Did Miss Bailey send you with any message to me?"

The question was so fierce that the truth was forced from the unwilling
lips of the spokesman.

"No ma'an--no sir," they faltered. "On'y that's the feeling what she
had. Und so you go away now 'out seeing Teacher, me und the other
fellows we gives you FIVE cents."

The cabinet drew near to hear the answer to this suggestion. It puzzled
them, for--

"Now, look here, boy," said Doctor Ingraham, "you'd better go home and
get to bed. You aren't well."

Morris conferred with his colleagues and returned with:

"We gives you SEVEN cents so you go home now 'out seeing Teacher. A
nickel und two pennies so you go _now_. Und say, Miss Blake could
to go by your side. She has kind feelings over you."

"Nonsense," said the man. "When will your teacher be down?"

"She ain't coming at all. She has no more feelings. So you goes now
we gives you a dime and a penny. ELEVEN cents. We ain't got it; on'y
we _could_ to get. Teacher gives me all times pennies."

Just as the stranger was wondering how much of truth these extraordinary
children knew, Teacher, calm-eyed and unruffled, appeared upon the
scene. She said, as she generally did:

"Doctor Ingraham! Who would have thought to find you here!" And then,
"Are you talking to my little people? They are the cleverest little
things, and such friends of mine. Morris here and I are the greatest
of cronies."

Teacher's manner, as she began her greeting, was serene and bright,
but a gloomy, even a morose, glance from Doctor Ingraham's cold blue
eye quite changed her. His voice too, considered as the voice of love,
sounded sulkily as he said:

"So it seems. He has given me an answer which you refused me."

"How generous of Morris and how thoughtful! He's always trying to save
me trouble. And the question, now, to which the answer belonged. May
one know that?"

"You know it well enough," with a glance up and down the deserted
alley, for even Patrick had realized that discretion is the better
part of statesmanship.

"Oh _that_" said Teacher. "And Morris's answer?"

"No."

"They really are the cleverest children."

"Little brutes! I can't think why you come down here every day. The
brats aren't in the least grateful."

"But they are. They think me perfection."

"That is the contagion of mental states."

"And they're not fond of you."
"That's it again, I suppose." And, as Teacher made no sign of having
heard, he went on: "Tea, do you know, is a dreadful bore."

"Of course, but cold tea is worse. And the cakes are so shattered
towards the end. Come."

"I've changed my mind. I'm not going. I'm tired of this sort of thing.
Answer me now."

"But the children," faltered Teacher. "I should miss them so."

At this sign of weakening Doctor Ingraham favoured the queer old street
with a tableau to which it long had been a stranger. And the cabinet,
creeping back to reconnoitre, immediately guessed the worst. Said
Morris:

"She's lovin' mit him und he's loving mit her. They've got loving
looks. I had once a auntie--"

This was too much for the torn spirit of the Leader of the Line. He
laid violent hands--and feet--upon the Monitor of Gold Fish. The Monitor
of Window Boxes promptly followed suit. Morris's prolonged yell of
agonized surprise brought Teacher flying to the rescue. And Teacher
brought Doctor Ingraham. While the latter held and restrained Patrick
and Nathan, Miss Bailey lavished endearments and caresses on her
favourite. The captor grew as restless as his captives under this
aggravation, and at last allowed his charges to escape.

"Look here!" he remonstrated; "I can't stand this sort of thing, you
know. It's cruel."

But Teacher's ears were all for Morris's tale of sorrow.

"I don't know what is mit Patrick," he was saying. "He hits me a hack
somethin' fierce sooner I says about mine auntie. Und Nathan, too, is
bad boys. He says you lies."

"I?" said Teacher; "I?"

"Yiss ma'an, that's how he says. On'y _I_ know you don't lies. I _know_
we should be monitors like you says."

"When, dearie?"

"On your weddinge. You know you says me, und Patrick, und Nathan,
should be monitors on your weddinge when you marries mit him." And
Morris stretched a pointing finger at the foe. After one radiant glance
at Teacher's face, Doctor Ingraham possessed himself of the scrubby
hand and shook it warmly.

"And so you shall, old chap," he cried, "so you shall. You may be best
man if you so desire. Anything you like."

"New clothes?" asked Morris.

"From stem to stern."

"Ice-cream?"

"Gallons."

"Paper napkins mit birds?"

"Bushels."

"Can I mine little sister bring?"

"A dozen little sisters if you have them."

"Can I go in a carriage, down and up? It's stylish."

"You shall have a parade of carriages--one for each sister."

"Morris," commanded Miss Bailey, "go home."

When she turned to confront Doctor Ingraham the "light face" was
brightly pink and the "terrible Sheeny eyes" held a mixture of
embarrassment and anger.

"Of course I can't explain this," she said. "I must simply ask you to
believe that he is making a dreadful mistake. You were quite right
when you said they were ungrateful little brutes. They are. You were
quite right, too, about teas being a bore. They are. So you will pardon
me if I go to see little Leah Yonowsky. The twins are reported ill
again. Good afternoon."

It was a very rueful and disgusted enemy that the cabinet discerned
in the offing.

"Good Lord!" cried the Commander-in-Chief. "Here he comes again, and
Miss Bailey ain't with him."

"Morris," said the enemy, "you've done for me, my boy."

"Won't she go by your side on the party?" asked the Prime Minister.

"She will not," admitted the hostile power. "So you may as well trot
out Miss Blake and begin to collect my eleven cents. For, though you
may not have discovered it--and there be those who doubt it--a ten-cent
cigar's a smoke."




MORRIS AND THE HONOURABLE TIM



On the first day of school, after the Christmas holidays, Teacher found
herself surrounded by a howling mob of little savages in which she had
much difficulty in recognizing her cherished First-Reader Class. Isidore
Belchatosky's face was so wreathed in smiles and foreign matter as to
be beyond identification; Nathan Spiderwitz had placed all his trust
in a solitary suspender and two unstable buttons; Eva Kidansky had
entirely freed herself from restraining hooks and eyes; Isidore
Applebaum had discarded shoe-laces; and Abie Ashnewsky had bartered
his only necktie for a yard of "shoe-string" licorice.

Miss Bailey was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original
type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-brushes, hair-ribbons, shoe
polish, pins, buttons, elastic, and other means to grace. Her talks
on soap and water became almost personal in tone, and her insistence
on a close union between such garments as were meant to be united, led
to a lively traffic in twisted and disreputable safety-pins. And yet
the First-Reader Class, in all other branches of learning so receptive
and responsive, made but halting and uncertain progress towards
thatstate of virtue which is next to godliness.

Early in January came the report that "Gum Shoe Tim" was on the war-path
and might be expected at any time. Miss Bailey heard the tidings in
calm ignorance until Miss Blake, who ruled over the adjoining kingdom,
interpreted the warning. A license to teach in the public schools of
New York is good for only one year. Its renewal depends upon the reports
of the Principal in charge of the school and of the Associate
Superintendent in whose district the school chances to be. After three
such renewals the license becomes permanent, but Miss Bailey was, as
a teacher, barely four months old. The Associate Superintendent for
her vicinity was the Honourable Timothy O'Shea, known and dreaded as
"Gum Shoe Tim," owing to his engaging way of creeping softly up back
stairs and appearing, all unheralded and unwelcome, upon the threshold
of his intended victim.

This, Miss Blake explained, was in defiance of all the rules of
etiquette governing such visits of inspection. The proper procedure
had been that of Mr. O'Shea's predecessor, who had always given timely
notice of his coming and a hint as to the subjects in which he intended
to examine the children. Some days later he would amble from room to
room, accompanied by the amiable Principal, and followed by the
gratitude of smiling and unruffled teachers.

This kind old gentleman was now retired and had been succeeded by Mr.
O'Shea, who, in addition to his unexpectedness, was adorned by an
abominable temper, an overbearing manner, and a sense of cruel humour.
He had almost finished his examinations at the nearest school where,
during a brisk campaign of eight days, he had caused five dismissals,
nine cases of nervous exhaustion, and an epidemic of hysteria.

Day by day nerves grew more tense, tempers more unsure, sleep and
appetite more fugitive. Experienced teachers went stolidly on with the
ordinary routine while beginners devoted time and energy to the more
spectacular portions of the curriculum. But no one knew the Honourable
Timothy's pet subjects and so no one could specialize to any great
extent.

Miss Bailey was one of the beginners, and Room 18 was made to shine
as the sun. Morris Mogilewsky, Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl, wrought
busily until his charges glowed redly against the water plants in their
shining bowl. Creepers crept, plants grew, and ferns waved under the
care of Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitor of the Window Boxes. There was such
a martial swing and strut in Patrick Brennan's leadership of the line
that it informed even the timid heart of Isidore Wishnewsky with a
war-like glow and his feet with a spasmodic but well-meant tramp. Sadie
Gonorowsky and Eva, her cousin, sat closely side by side, no longer
"mad on theirselves," but "mit kind feelings." The work of the preceding
term was laid in neat and docketed piles upon the low book-case. The
children were enjoined to keep clean and entire. And Teacher, a nervous
and unsmiling Teacher, waited dully.

A week passed thus, and then the good-hearted and experienced Miss
Blake hurried ponderously across the hall to put Teacher on her guard.

"I've just had a note from one of the grammar teachers," she panted.
"'Gum Shoe Tim' is up in Miss Greene's room. He'll take this floor
next. Now, see here, child, don't look so frightened. The Principle
is with Tim. Of course you're nervous, but try not to show it. And
you'll be all right, his lay is discipline and reading. Well, good
luck to you!"

Miss Bailey took heart of grace. The children read surprisingly well,
were absolutely good, and the enemy under convoy of the friendly
Principal would be much less terrifying than the enemy at large and
alone. It was, therefore, with a manner almost serene that she turned
to greet the kindly concerned Principal and the dreaded "Gum Shoe Tim."
The latter she found less ominous of aspect than she had been led to
fear, and the Principal's charming little speech of introduction made
her flush with quick pleasure. And the anxious eyes of Sadie Gonorowsky,
noting the flush, grew calm as Sadie whispered to Eva, her close cousin:

"Say, Teacher has a glad. She's red on the face. It could to be her
papa."

"No. It's comp'ny," answered Eva sagely. "It ain't her papa. It's
comp'ny the whiles Teacher takes him by the hand."

The children were not in the least disconcerted by the presence of the
large man. They always enjoyed visitors and they liked the heavy gold
chain which festooned the wide white waistcoat of this guest; and,
asthey watched him, the Associate Superintendent began to superintend.

He looked at the children all in their clean and smiling rows: he
looked at the flowers and the gold fish; at the pictures and the plaster
casts: he looked at the work of the last term and he looked at Teacher.
As he looked he swayed gently on his rubber heels and decided that he
was going to enjoy  the coming quarter of an hour. Teacher pleased him
from the first. She was neither old nor ill-favoured, and she was most
evidently nervous. The combination appealed both to his love of power
and his peculiar sense of humour. Settling deliberately in the chair
of state, he began:

"Can the children sing, Miss Bailey?"

They could sing very prettily and they did.

"Very nice, indeed," said the voice of visiting authority. "Very nice.
Their music is exceptionally good. And are they drilled? Children,
will you march for me?"

Again they could and did. Patrick marshaled his line in time and triumph
up and down the aisles to the evident interest and approval of the
"comp'ny," and then Teacher led the class through some very energetic
Swedish movements. While arms and bodies were bending and straightening
at Teacher's command and example, the door opened and a breathless boy
rushed in. He bore an unfolded note and, as Teacher had no hand to
spare, the boy placed the paper on the desk under the softening eyes
of the Honourable Timothy, who glanced down idly and then pounced upon
the note and read its every word.

"For you, Miss Bailey," he said in the voice before which even the
school janitor had been known to quail. "Your friend was thoughtful,
though a little late." And poor palpitating Miss Bailey read.

"Watch out! 'Gum Shoe Tim' is in the building. The Principal caught
him on the back stairs and they're going round together. He's as cross
as a bear. Greene in dead faint in dressing-room. Says he's going to
fire her. Watch out for him, and send the news on. His lay is reading
and discipline."

Miss Bailey grew cold with sick and unreasoning fear. As she gazed
wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the statement that "Gum Shoe
Tim" was "as cross as a bear," the gentle-hearted Principal took the
paper from her nerveless grasp.

"It's all right," he assured her. "Mr. O'Shea understands that you had
no part in this. It's _all_ right. You are not responsible."

But Teacher had no ears for his soothing. She could only watch with
fascinated eyes as the Honourable Timothy reclaimed the note and wrote
across it's damning face: "Miss Greene may come to. She is not
fired.--T.O'S."

"Here, boy," he called; "take this to your teacher." The puzzled
messenger turned to obey, and the Associate Superintendent saw that
though his dignity had suffered his power had increased. To the list
of those whom he might, if so disposed, devour, he had now added the
name of the Principal, who was quick to understand that an unpleasant
investigation lay before him. If Miss Bailey could not be held
responsible for this system of inter-classroom communication, it was
clear that the Principal could.

Every trace of interest had left Mr. O'Shea's voice as he asked:

"Can they read?"

"Oh, yes, they read," responded Teacher, but her spirit was crushed
and the children reflected her depression. Still, they were marvellously
good and that blundering note had said, "Discipline is his lay." Well,
here he had it.

There was one spectator of this drama, who, understanding no word nor
incident therein, yet missed no shade of the many emotions which had
stirred the light face of his lady. Towards the front of the room sat
Morris Mogilewsky, with every nerve tuned to Teacher's, and with an
appreciation of the situation in which the other children had no share.
On the afternoon of one of those dreary days of waiting for the evil
which had now come, Teacher had endeavoured to explain the nature and
possible result of this ordeal to her favourite. It was clear to him
now that she was troubled, and he held the large and unaccustomed
presence of the comp'ny mit whiskers responsible. Countless generations
of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct which now led
Morris to propitiate an angry power. Luckily, he was prepared with an
offering of a suitable nature. He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few
days, and then to give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person
about presents. One might give her one's most cherished possession
with a brave and cordial heart, for on each Friday afternoon she
returned the gifts she had received during the week. And this with no
abatement of gratitude.

Morris rose stealthily, crept forward, and placed a bright blue
bromo-seltzer bottle in the fat hand which hung over the back of the
chair of state. The hand closed instinctively as, with dawning
curiosity, the Honourable Timothy studied the small figure at his side.
It began in a wealth of loosely curling hair which shaded a delicate
face, very pointed as to chin and monopolized by a pair of dark eyes,
sad and deep and beautiful. A faded blue "jumper" was buttoned tightly
across the narrow chest; frayed trousers were precariously attached
to the "jumper," and impossible shoes and stockings supplemented the
trousers. Glancing from boy to bottle, the "comp'ny mit whiskers"
asked:

"What's this for?"

"For you."

"What's in it?"

"A present."

Mr. O'Shea removed the cork and proceeded to draw out incredible
quantities of absorbent cotton. When there was no more to come, a faint
tinkle sounded within the blue depths, and Mr. O'Shea, reversing the
bottle, found himself possessed of a trampled and disfigured sleeve
link of most palpable brass.

"It's from gold," Morris assured him. "You puts it in your--'scuse
me--shirt. Wish you health to wear it."

"Thank you," said the Honourable Tim, and there was a tiny break in
the gloom which had enveloped him. And then, with a quick memory of
the note and of his anger:

"Miss Bailey, who is this young man?"

And Teacher, of whose hobbies Morris was one, answered warmly: "That
is Morris Mogilewsky, the best of boys. He takes care of the gold-fish,
and does all sorts of things for me. Don't you, dear?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an," Morris answered.

"I'm lovin' much mit you. I gives presents on the company over you."

"Aint he rather big to speak such broken English?" asked Mr. O'Shea.
"I hope you remember that it is part of your duty to stamp out the
dialect."

"Yes, I know," Miss Bailey answered. "But Morris has been in America
for so short a time. Nine months, is it not?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an. I comes out of Russia," responded Morris, on the
verge of tears and with his face buried in Teacher's dress.

Now Mr. O'Shea had his prejudices--strong and deep. He had been given
jurisdiction over that particular district because it was his native
heath, and the Board of Education considered that he would be more in
sympathy with the inhabitants than a stranger. The truth was absolutely
the reverse. Because he had spent his early years in a large old house
on East Broadway, because he now saw his birthplace changed to a squalid
tenement, and the happy hunting grounds of his youth grown ragged and
foreign--swarming with strange faces and noisy with strange tongues--Mr.
O'Shea bore a sullen grudge against the usurping race.

He resented the caressing air with which Teacher held the little hand
placed so confidently within her own and he welcomed the opportunity
of gratifying his still ruffled temper and his racial antagonism at
the same time. He would take a rise out of this young woman about her
little Jew. She would be comforted later on. Mr. O'Shea rather fancied
himself in the role of comforter, when the sufferer was neither old
nor ill-favoured. And so he set about creating the distress which he
would later change to gratitude and joy. Assuredly the Honourable
Timothy had a well-developed sense of humour.

"His English is certainly dreadful," remarked the voice of authority,
and it was not an English voice, nor is O'Shea distinctively an English
name. "Dreadful. And, by the way, I hope you are not spoiling these
youngsters. You must remember that you are fitting them for the battle
of life. Don't coddle your soldiers. Can you reconcile your present
attitude with discipline?"

"With Morris--yes," Teacher answered. "He is gentle and tractable
beyond words."

"Well, I hope you're right," grunted Mr. O'Shea "but don't coddle
them."

And so the incident closed. The sleeve link was tucked, before Morris's
yearning eyes, into the reluctant pocket of the wide white waistcoat,
and Morris returned to his place. He found his reader and the proper
page, and the lesson went on with brisk serenity: real on the children's
part, but bravely assumed on Teacher's. Child after child stood up;
read; sat down again; and it came to be the duty of Bertha Binderwitz
to read the entire page of which the others had each read a line. She
began jubilantly, but soon stumbled, hesitated, and wailed: "Stands
a fierce word. I don't know what it is," and Teacher turned to write
the puzzling word upon the blackboard.

Morris's heart stopped with a sickening suddenness and then rushed
madly on again. He had a new and dreadful duty to perform. All his
mother's counsel, all his father's precepts told him that it was his
duty. Yet fear held him in his little seat behind his little desk,
while his conscience insisted on this unalterable decree of the social
code: "So somebody's clothes is wrong it's polite you says 'scuse' und
tells it out."

And here was Teacher whom he dearly loved, whose ideals of personal
adornment extended to full sets of buttons on jumpers and to laces in
both shoes, here was his immaculate lady fair in urgent need of
assistance and advice, and all because she had on that day inaugurated
a delightfully vigorous exercise for which, architecturally, she was
not designed.

There was yet room for hope that some one else would see the breach
and brave the danger. But no. The visitor sat stolidly in the chair
of state, the Principal sat serenely beside him, the children sat each
in his own little place, behind his own little desk, keeping his own
little eyes on his own little book. No. Morris's soul cried with
Hamlet's:

  "_The time is out of joint;--O cursed spite,
    That ever I was born to set it right_!"

Up into the quiet air went his timid hand. Teacher, knowing him in his
more garrulous moods, ignored the threatened interruption of Bertha's
spirited resume, but the windmill action of the little arm attracted
the Honourable Tim's attention.

"The best of boys wants you," he suggested, and Teacher perforce asked:

"Well, Morris, what is it?"

Not until he was on his feet did the Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl,
appreciate the enormity of the mission he had undertaken. The other
children began to understand, and watched his struggle for words and
breath with sympathy or derision, as their natures prompted. But there
are no words in which one may politely mention ineffective safety-pins
to one's glass of fashion. Morris's knees trembled queerly, his
breathing grew difficult, and Teacher seemed a very great way off as
she asked again:

"Well, what is it, dear?"

Morris panted a little, smiled weakly, and then sat down. Teacher was
evidently puzzled, the "Comp'ny" alert, the Principal uneasy.

"Now, Morris," Teacher remonstrated, "you must tell me what you want."

But Morris had deserted his etiquette and his veracity, and murmured
only:

"Nothings."

"Just wanted to be noticed," said the Honourable Tim. "It is easy to
spoil them." And he watched the best of boys rather closely, for a
habit of interrupting reading lessons, wantonly and without reason,
was a trait in the young of which he disapproved.

When this disapprobation manifested itself in Mr. O'Shea's countenance,
the loyal heart of Morris interpreted it as a new menace to his
sovereign. No later than yesterday she had warned them of the vital
importance of coherence. "Every one knows," she had said, "that only
common little boys and girls come apart. No one ever likes them," and
the big stranger was even now misjudging her.

Again his short arm agitated the quiet air. Again his trembling legs
upheld a trembling boy. Again authority urged. Again Teacher asked:

"Well, Morris, what is it, dear?"

All this was as before, but not as before was poor harassed Miss
Bailey's swoop down the aisle, her sudden taking of Morris's troubled
little face between her soft hands, the quick near meeting with her
kind eyes, the note of pleading in her repetition:

"What do you want, Morris?"

He was beginning to answer when it occurred to him that the truth might
make her cry. There was an unsteadiness about her upper lip which
seemed to indicate the possibility. Suddenly he found that he no longer
yearned for words in which to tell her of her disjointment, but for
something else--anything else--to say.

His miserable eyes escaped from hers and wandered to the wall in
desperate search for conversation. There was no help in the pictures,
no inspiration in the plaster casts, but on the blackboard he read,
"Tuesday, January twenty-first, 1902." Only the date, but he must make
it serve. With Teacher close beside him, with the hostile eye of the
Honourable Tim upon him, hedged round about by the frightened or
admiring regard of the First-Reader Class, Morris blinked rapidly,
swallowed resolutely, and remarked:

"Teacher, this year's Nineteen-hundred-and-two," and knew that all was
over.

The caressing clasp of Teacher's hands grew into a grip of anger. The
countenance of Mr. O'Shea took on the beatified expression of the
prophet who has found honour and verification in his own country.

"The best of boys has his off days and this is one of them," he
remarked.

"Morris," said Teacher, "did you stop a reading lesson to tell me that?
Do you think I don't know what the year is? I'm ashamed of you."

Never had she spoken thus. If the telling had been difficult to Morris
when she was "glad on him," it was impossible now that she was a prey
to such evident "mad feelings." And yet he must make some explanation.
So he murmured: "Teacher, I tells you 'scuse. I know you knows what
year stands, on'y it's polite I tells you something, und I had a fraid."

"And so you bothered your Teacher with that nonsense," said Tim. "You're
a nice boy!"

Morris's eyes were hardly more appealing than Teacher's as the two
culprits, for so they felt themselves, turned to their judge.

"Morris is a strange boy," Miss Bailey explained. "He can't be managed
by ordinary methods--"

"And extraordinary methods don't seem to work to-day," Mr. O'Shea
interjected.

"--and I think," Teacher continued, "that it might be better not to
press the point."

"Oh, if you have no control over him--" Mr. O'Shea was beginning
pleasantly, when the Principal suggested:

"You'd better let us hear what he has to say, Miss Bailey; make him
understand that you are master here." And Teacher, with a heart-sick
laugh at the irony of this advice in the presence of the Associate
Superintendent, turned to obey.

But Morris would utter no words but these, dozens of times repeated:
"I have a fraid." Miss Bailey coaxed, bribed, threatened and cajoled;
shook him surreptitiously, petted him openly. The result was always
the same: "It's polite I tells you something out, on'y I had a fraid."

"But, Morris, dear, of what?" cried Teacher. "Are you afraid of me?
Stop crying now and answer. Are you afraid of Miss Bailey?"

"N-o-o-oh m-a-a-an."

"Are you afraid of the Principal?"

"N-o-o-oh m-a-a-an."

"Are you afraid"--with a slight pause, during which a native hue of
honesty was foully done to death--"of the kind gentleman we are all
so glad to see?"

"N-o-o-oh m-a-a-an."

"Well, then, what is the matter with you? Are you sick? Don't you think
you would like to go home to your mother?"

"N-o-o-oh m-a-a-an; I ain't sick. I tells you 'scuse."

The repeated imitation of a sorrowful goat was too much for the
Honourable Tim.

"Bring that boy to me," he commanded. "I'll show you how to manage
refractory and rebellious children."

With much difficulty and many assurances that the gentleman was not
going to hurt him, Miss Bailey succeeded in untwining Morris's legs
from the supports of the desk and in half carrying, half leading him
up to the chair of state. An ominous silence had settled over the room.
Eva Gonorowsky was weeping softly, and the redoubtable Isidore Applebaum
was stiffened in a frozen calm.

"Morris," began the Associate Superintendent in his most awful tones,
"will you tell me why you raised your hand? Come here, sir." Teacher
urged him gently, and like dog to heel, he went. He halted within a
pace or two of Mr. O'Shea, and lifted a beseeching face towards him.

"I couldn't to tell nothing out," said he. "I tells you 'scuse. I'm
got a fraid."

The Honourable Tim lunged quickly and caught the terrified boy
preparatory to shaking him, but Morris escaped and fled to his haven
of safety--his Teacher's arms. When Miss Bailey felt the quick clasp
of the thin little hands, the heavy beating of the over-tried heart,
and the deep convulsive sobs, she turned on the Honourable Timothy
O'Shea and spoke:

"I must ask you to leave this room at once," she announced. The
Principal started, and then sat back. Teacher's eyes were dangerous,
and the Honourable Tim might profit by a lesson. "You've frightened
the child until he can't breathe. I can do nothing with him while you
remain. The examination is ended. You may go."

Now Mr. O'Shea saw he had gone a little too far in his effort to create
the proper dramatic setting for his clemency. He had not expected the
young woman to "rise" quite so far and high. His deprecating
half-apology, half-eulogy, gave Morris the opportunity he craved.

[Illustration: "I MUST ASK YOU TO LEAVE THIS ROOM"]

[Illustration: "TEACHER, I TELLS YOU 'SCUSE"]

"Teacher." he panted; "I wants to whisper mit you in the ear."

With a dexterous movement he knelt upon her lap and tore out his
solitary safety-pin. He then clasped her tightly and made his
explanation. He began in the softest of whispers, which increased in
volume as it did in interest, so that he reached the climax at the
full power of his boy soprano voice.

"Teacher, Missis Bailey, I know you know what year stands. On'y it's
polite I tells you something, und I had a fraid the while the comp'ny
mit the whiskers sets und rubbers. But, Teacher, it's like this: your
jumper's sticking out und you could to take mine safety-pin."

He had understood so little of all that had passed that he was beyond
being surprised by the result of this communication. Miss Bailey had
gathered him into her arms and had cried in a queer helpless way. And
as she cried she had said over and over again: "Morris, how could you?
Oh, how could you, dear? How _could_ you?"

The Principal and "the comp'ny mit whiskers" had looked solemnly at
one another for a struggling moment, and had then broken into laughter,
long and loud, until the visiting authority was limp and moist. The
children waited in polite uncertainty, but when Miss Bailey, after
some indecision, had contributed a wan smile, which later grew into
a shaky laugh, the First-Reader Class went wild.

Then the Honourable Timothy arose to say good-by. He reiterated his
praise of the singing and reading, the blackboard work and the moral
tone. An awkward pause ensued, during which the Principal engaged the
young Gonorowskys in impromptu conversation. The Honourable Tim crossed
over to Miss Bailey's side and steadied himself for a great effort.

"Teacher," he began meekly, "I tells you 'scuse. This sort of thing
makes a man feel like a bull in a china shop. Do you think the little
fellow will shake hands with me? I was really only joking."

"But surely he will," said Miss Bailey, as she glanced down at the
tangle of dark curls resting against her breast. "Morris, dear, aren't
you going to say good-by to the gentleman?"

Morris relaxed one hand from its grasp on his lady and bestowed it on
Mr. O'Shea.

"Good by," said he gently. "I gives you presents, from gold presents,
the while you're friends mit Teacher. I'm loving much mit her too."

At this moment the Principal turned, and Mr. O'Shea, in a desperate
attempt to retrieve his dignity, began: "As to class management and
discipline--"

But the Principal was not to be deceived.

"Don't you think, Mr. O'Shea," said he, "that you and I had better
leave the management of the little ones to the women? You have noticed,
perhaps, that this is Nature's method."




WHEN A MAN'S WIDOWED



It was a quarter past nine and Miss Bailey was calling the roll, an
undertaking which, after months of daily practice, was still formidable.
Beginning with Abraham Abrahamowsky and continuing through the alphabet
to Solomon Zaracheck, the roll-call of the First-Reader Class was full
of stumbling blocks and pitfalls. Teacher insisted upon absolute silence
during the five minutes thus consumed, and so it chanced that the
excitement of Miss Blake, bursting into Room 18 at this particular
time, was thrown into strong relief against the prevailing peace.

"Miss Bailey," began the ruffled sovereign of the room across the hall,
"did the Principal speak to you about one of my boys being put back
into your grade?"

"Oh, yes; some weeks ago."

"Well, he has been absent ever since, but he turned up this morning.
Are you ready to take him now?"

"But of course--How old is he?"

"Nearly seven. Too old for your grade and too advanced, but the
Principal wants you to have him because my boys laugh at him. His
mother is dead, his sisters in an orphan asylum, and we thought that
your little girls might have a civilizing influence over him."

"Perhaps they may," Teacher cheerfully acquiesced. "Eva Gonorowsky
alone would civilize a whole tribe of savages. Will you bring him to
me?"

The door of Room 17 was not quite closed, and from behind it came
sounds of talking and of laughter. Miss Blake threw a few words upon
the turmoil, and silence immediately ensued. Then said she: "Isidore
Diamantstein, come here," and the only result was a slight titter.

"Abie Fishhandler," she next commanded, "bring Diamantstein to Miss
Bailey's room."

The tittering increased and to it were added a scuffle and a sleepily
fretful "Lemme be." A heavy footstep crossed the hall and the stalwart
Abie Fishhandler stalked into Room 18, bearing the new boy in his arms.
From his dusty unlaced shoes to his jungle of gleaming red hair, Isidore
Diamantstein was inert, dirty, and bedraggled.

"Oh, let him stand!" cried Miss Blake sharply. "Here, Diamantstein,
what's the matter with you? This is Miss Bailey, your new teacher."

"How do you do, Isidore?" said Miss Bailey, as she stooped and took
his hand. Then she added quickly to Miss Blake: "He seems feverish.
Is he ill?" "Perhaps he is," the other answered. "I never saw him so
queer as he is this morning. You'd better let the doctor see him when
he comes."

But long before the eleven o'clock visit of the physician of the Board
of Health, the illness of Isidore had reached its crisis. When Miss
Bailey had established him in his new place he had seen nothing of his
surroundings and had been quite deaf to the greetings, whether shy or
jeering, with which the First-Reader Class had welcomed him. Left to
his own devices, he had promptly laid his arms upon his desk and his
head upon his arms. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Isidore's
brilliant head still rested on his folded arms and Teacher felt that
she must make some effort to comfort his wordless misery.

"Isidore," she began, bending over him, "you won't have to stay here
very long. You may go back to Miss Blake in a few days if you are good.
So now, dear boy, cheer up!" But as she patted the shoulder nearest
to her a long sigh quivered through the little body.

"Now, don't do that," Miss Bailey urged. "Isidore, sit up nicely and
let me look at you," and, slipping her hand beneath the chin, she
turned the face up to hers. She was prepared for tear-drenched eyes
and trembling lips but she found neither. Isidore's dark-lashed lids
drooped heavily over his unseeing eyes, his head rolled loosely from
side to side, and he began to slip, silently and unconsciously to the
floor.

Teacher, in wild alarm, bore him to an open window and sent Patrick
Brennan in flying search of the Principal. A great revulsion shook her
whenever she looked at the blank little face, but she never guessed
the truth. Patrick's quest was short and the Principal's first glance
sufficient.

"Send for the janitor," he commanded, and then, "Miss Bailey, may I
speak to you in the hall?"

Teacher invested Morris Mogilewsky in the chair and the position of
authority, sent Patrick for the janitor, and, strangely shaken, followed
the Principal.

"What is it?" she asked, miserably, when the door was closed. "What
is the matter with that baby?"

"Well," said the Principal kindly, "if you were more experienced you
would be less shocked than I fear you are going to be. The child is
simply and most abominably drunk."

"Drunk!" gasped Miss Bailey. "Drunk! and not seven years old!"

"Drunk," echoed the Principal. "Poor little chap! Did Miss Blake tell
you the history?--The mother dead, the father away all day, no woman's
care. Of course, the end will be the reformatory, but I wonder if we
can do anything before that end is reached?"

"Oh, it can't be quite hopeless!" cried Miss Bailey. "Please give him
to me. But I want to see that father."

"So you shall," the Principal assured her. "I shall send for him
to-morrow to explain this. But he will be entirely at sea. I have him
here every two or three weeks about one or other of his children--there
are two boys in the upper grades--and the poor devil never can explain.
However, I shall let you know when he is here."

The morrow proved the Principal's surmise to have been correct. Mr.
Lazarus Diamantstein stood in helpless and hopeless misery before a
court of inquiry comprising the Principal, Miss Bailey, the physician
of the Board of Health, a representative of the Gerry Society, the
truant officer, the indignant janitor, and a policeman who had come
to the school in reference to the florid language of his own small
son, and, for scenic effect, was pressed into service. Mr. Diamantstein
turned from one to another of these stern-faced officials and to each
in turn he made his unaltered plea:

"Mine leetle Izzie was a goot leetle boy. He don't never make like you
says. Ach! never, never!"

Again, for effect, scenic or moral, the Principal indicated one of the
hostile figures of the court. "This gentleman," said he, "belongs to
a society which will take charge of your son. Have you ever, Mr.
Diamantstein, heard of the Gerry Society?"

Poor Mr. Diamantstein cowered. In all the terrifying world in which
he groped so darkly, the two forces against which he had been most
often warned were the Board of Health, which might at any time and
without notice wash out one's house and confiscate one's provisions;
and the Gerry Society, which washed one's children with soap made from
the grease of pigs, and fed them with all sorts of "traef" and unblessed
meat.

"Ach, no!" he implored. "Gott, no! You should not take and make so mit
mine' leetle boy. He ain't a bad boy. He sure ain't."

"Really, I don't think he is," Miss Bailey's cool and quiet voice
interposed, and in a moment the harassed father was at her side
pleading, extenuating, fawning.

"That young lady," said the Principal, "is your only hope. If Miss
Bailey--" Mr. Diamantstein interpreted this as an introduction and
bowed most wonderfully--"If Miss Bailey will keep Isidore in her class
he may stay in the school. If not, this gentleman--By the way, Miss
Bailey, is he at school to-day?"

"Oh, yes, and behaving beautifully. Perhaps his father would care to
see him. Will you come with me, Mr. Diamantstein?"

Yearnings to see the cause of all this trouble and sorrow were not
very strong in the paternal bosom, but Mr. Diamantstein welcomed the
opportunity to escape from officialdom and inquiry.

As she led the way to Room 18, Teacher was again impressed by the
furtive helplessness of the man. Living in a land whose language was
well-nigh unintelligible to him, ruled and judged by laws whose
existence he could learn only by breaking them, driven out of one
country, unwelcomed in another, Mr. Diamantstein was indeed a wanderer
and an outcast. Some note of sympathy found its way into Miss Bailey's
efforts at conversation, and Mr. Diamantstein's quick ear detected it.
The vision of Isidore in his new surroundings, the pictures and flowers,
the swinging canary and the plaster casts, impressed him mightily,
while Miss Bailey's evident and sincere interest in his efforts to do
what he could for his boys took him entirely by surprise. He admonished
Isidore to superhuman efforts towards the reformation which might keep
him in this beautiful room and under the care of its lady, and, as he
was about to return to his neglected sewing machine, he gave Miss
Bailey all he had to give:

"Say, Teacher," said he, with a wistful glance at his frail little
son; "say, you want to lick Issie? Well, you can."

"Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Diamantstein" returned Miss Bailey, while
Isidore, thus bestowed, wept aloud, and required instant soothing.
"That's very good of you, but I hope it won't be necessary."

"Well," said the father generously, "so you _want_ lick, so you _can_
lick." And so departed.

Miss Bailey's new responsibility continued to behave beautifully. He
was peacefully disposed towards the other boys, who feared and venerated
him as a member of the "Clinton Street gang." He fell promptly captive
to the dark and gentle charms of Eva Gonorowsky and to the calm dominion
of Teacher. To the latter he showed a loving confidence which she met
with a broad-minded tolerance, very wonderful to his eyes in a person
of authority. She seemed really to understand the sweet reasonableness
of the reminiscences with which he entertained her. And if she sometimes
deplored the necessity of so much lying, stealing, fighting and late
hours, well so, of late, did he. She asked him quite calmly one day
what he had had for breakfast on the morning of his first day in Room
18, and how he had chanced to be so drunk, and he, with true economy,
answered two questions with one word:

"Beer."

"And where," asked Teacher, still carefully unimpressed "did you get
it? From your father?"

"Naw," said Isidore, whose manners were yet unformed "He don't never
get no beer. He ain't got a can even."

"Then where?"

"To the s'loon--"

"And which saloon?" Miss Bailey's quiet eyes betrayed no trace of her
determination that the proprietor should suffer the full penalty of
the law. "I thought little boys were not allowed into saloons."

"Well," Isidore admitted, "I ain't gone in the s'loon. I tells the
lady on our floor that my papa likes that she should lend her can und
she says, 'He's welcome, all right.' Und I gives the can on a man what
stands by the s'loon, und I says: 'My papa he has a sickness, und beer
is healthy for him. On'y he couldn't to come for buy none. You could
to take a drink for yourself.' Und the man says, 'Sure.' Und he gets
the beer und takes the drink--a _awful_ big drink--und I sets by
the curb und drinks what is in the can. It's awful nice for me."

Miss Bailey's hope for any real or lasting moral change in Isidore was
sadly shaken by this revelation. Six and a half years old and
deliberately plotting and really enjoying a drunken debauch! Surely,
the reformatory seemed inevitable. Suddenly she became conscious that
the chain of circumstance in Isidore's recital was not complete.

"But the money," she asked; "where did you get that?"

Isidore's eyes were wells of candour as he answered: "Off a lady."

"And why did she give it to you?"

"'Cause I tells her my mamma lays on the hospital und I like I should
buy her a orange on'y I ain't got no money for buy none."

"Oh, Isidore!" cried Teacher, in a voice in which horror, pity,
reproach, and wonder mingled. "And you have no mother!" And Isidore's
answer was his professional whine, most heartrending and insincere.

Gradually and carefully Teacher became slightly censorious and mildly
didactic, and slowly Isidore Diamantstein came to forsake the paths
of evil and to spend long afternoons in the serene and admiring
companionship of Morris Mogilewsky, Patrick Brennan and Nathan
Spiderwitz. But when, early in December, he found a stranded comic
valentine and presented it, blushingly, to Eva Gonorowsky, Miss Bailey
found that success was indeed most sweet.

Mr. Diamantstein's visits to the school, directed with patient futility
to the propitiation of the teachers of his older sons, always ended
in a cheering little talk with the young ruler of Room 18. To her he
confided his history, his difficulties, and his hopes. In return she
gave him advice, encouragement, and, in moments of too pressing need,
assistance. The need of this kind was, however, rare, for Mr.
Diamantstein was an expert in one of the most difficult branches of
the tailor's art, and his salary better than that of many of his
fellows.

Shortly after the incident of the valentine Mr. Diamantstein came to
Room 18 in radiant array. His frock coat was new and of a wondrous
fashion, his tan shoes were of superlative length and sharpness of
toe, both his coat and vest were open to the lowest button and turned
back to give due prominence to the bright blue shirt beneath. His hair
shone in luxurious and oiled profusion, and in the collarless band of
his shirt, a chaste diamond stud, not much larger than a butter-plate,
flashed and shimmered through his curled black beard. It was luncheon
lime, and Teacher was at liberty.

"Say, Missis Pailey," he began, "what you think? I'm a loafer."

"Did you give up your position?" asked Miss Bailey, "or did you lose
it? You can easily get another, I hope."

"You not understand," cried the guest eagerly. "I was one great big
loafer," and he laid outstretched hands upon the blue bosom of his
gala shirt; "one great big loafer man."

"No, I'm afraid I don't understand," confessed Miss Bailey. "Tell me
about it."

"Vell, I was a vidder man," Mr. Diamantstein explained. "Mine vife she
die. From long she die, und I'm a vidder man. But now I marry, maybe,
again. I ain't no more a vidder man. I was a loafer on a beautiful
yonge lady."

"Oh! you're a lover, Mr. Diamantstein. Why, that's the best news I've
heard for ages! And your new wife will take care of the boys. I am so
glad!"

"She's a beautiful yonge lady," the Lothario continued; "but easy
scared! Oh, awful easy scared! So I don't tell her nothings over those
devil boys."

"Now, Mr. Diamantstein--" Teacher began