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A Bent Twig
by
“Well, I don’t love him,” said Gertie shortly, “I hate him!”
“That’s another thing you mustn’t say.”
“All right, I won’t say it. I do it all the time.”
“What’s the capital of Massachusetts?” demanded Miss Bailey, changing the subject with a jerk.
“It’s Grandpa’s capital that’s bothering me,” laughed Gertie, but she allowed herself to be led away from the trials and problems of Goerck Street into the cool groves of learning.
* * * * *
A few mornings later Miss Blake, whose kingdom, Room 17, bordered upon Miss Bailey’s territory, bustled into Room 18 with a fat and elaborate purse in her hand.
“You know that wicked little Hymie Abrahams who seems to be always getting into trouble,” she began, when the First Readers had stiffened to straight “attention” and sat, each in his little place, like some extraordinary form of tin soldiers.
Miss Bailey nodded. She had indeed for many days been haunted by the fear that Hymie Abrahams would perpetrate some too flagrant breach of discipline, and be degraded to the First Reader class, and she naturally dreaded the advent of such a wolf among her little lambs.
“Well,” said Miss Blake, “he can’t be all bad. I guess he has some human feelings. He brought me this bag this morning. Says his mother doesn’t need it any more, and wants me to have it. It’s almost new, you see, and really very handsome. Just let me show you the fittings. I guess his mother wouldn’t find much use for powder puffs and mirrors and smelling-salts. Not if I know anything about the women of the East Side, she wouldn’t.”
She spread the glittering useless things upon Miss Bailey’s desk, and the force with which this bribe carried away her earlier dislike showed that Hymie Solomon had mastered the art of character reading. And Miss Bailey, as she reviewed the dainty paraphernalia spread before her, found herself wondering how soon Madame Solomon would miss her treasures and come storming in pursuit of them. And beside Miss Bailey’s desk sat Isidore Cohen in an agony of doubt and disillusionment. His one childish attribute was that of believing that all he knew must be common knowledge. Therefore he argued that the powers before him knew as well as he did that Hymie Solomon was motherless, and that Miss Blake would be most unwise to look her gift purse in the pedigree. And so, as Miss Blake exhibited and Miss Bailey admired, the work of weeks was undone. One teacher was acting as a “fence,” and another was cheering and encouraging her. He had doubted this “honesty the best policy” propaganda from the first. But he had believed in the sincerity of its prophet.
Yet he might have been prepared. Had not his father, wise and experienced in the ways of the world, armed him with the formula: “Krists is fakes”? His own adventures had corroborated this, and Miss Bailey from the very first had made no attempt to conceal her connection with that despised sect. Of course she was a fake. No more than half an hour ago she had thrilled her audience with misinformation, and manufactured biography all going to prove the nobleness–even the expediency–of honesty; and now she was purring delightedly over the fruits of Hymie’s sleight-of-hand.
Isidore’s was not a sentimental nature. Idealism was not his forte. And yet he could not help wishing that, if only for the confusion of Hymie and his father, Miss Bailey had proved to be “on the level.”
Mr. Cohen pere believed in nothing but the rights of man, though his opinion of man was so low as to preclude his having any rights at all. He was especially opprobrious toward all those in authority, and he made no exception in the case of his son’s teacher. “She belongs to the machine,” he would asseverate with warmth. “Run by the machine, paid by the machine, a part of the machine. Policemen, firemen, teachers, inspectors, they are all the same. All parts of the big machine. And what is it chewing? Us. What does it live on? Us again. Don’t you try to fool me about that teacher of yours.”