FullReads

“Dear Mr. Eissler,” ran the note. “Will you come to Room 18 when you are at leisure? I have rather an interesting specimen of Child Life which I am keeping for your inspection.”

During the short period which had elapsed between the stranger’s arrival and the departure of First Readers, the new-comer had undergone an entire change of manner. Not that he had softened toward his little future companions. Rather he grew in hatred and vindictiveness as the busy morning progressed. It was his attitude toward Miss Bailey which changed. In the Principal’s office and on the way through the halls he had seemed to waver on the brink of friendliness. But he had sat beside her desk and had seen her moving up and down through the narrow streets of her kingdom, encouraging here, laughing there, explaining with patient care and detail, laying a friendly hand on bent little shoulders and setting hair ribbons more jauntily erect–behaving, in fact, with a freedom and affection most evidently reflected and magnified by her subjects. And as he watched her his little mouth lost all its softness, and the hard, inscrutable look disfigured him again.

When Mr. Eissler, in response to the summons, opened the door, the newcomer’s back was toward it. He wheeled at the sound, and clear and quick he lashed out his single phrase.

Miss Bailey chanced to be looking at her old friend, and at the child’s voice saw him cringe and shrink as if from a blow.

“There it is again,” she cried. “That’s all we can get him to say. Tell me, Mr. Eissler, what does it mean?”

She got no answer.

The man, in all the dignity of his cutaway and his white linen, was glaring at the child, and the child, in his ridiculous rags, pitiful, starved, and dirty, was looking the man over from top to toe with contemptuous, careless eyes. They stood so for some space, and it was the man who turned away.

“I will not pretend not to understand,” said he to Teacher; “but I must decline to translate those words. They bring back–they bring back! Ah, God! what they bring back!”

“Ah, yes, I know!” said Miss Bailey, in vague but ready sympathy. “I’m very, very sorry.”

While this conversation was in progress its object was wandering about Room 18, surveying its pictures, the canary, the gold-fish bowl, and the flowery window-boxes with a blase air. Occasionally he glanced at Miss Bailey with unfriendly disillusionment. And upon one of these occasions Mr. Eissler, at Teacher’s request, asked him his name.

The boy answered at greater length than before, but, judging by the man’s face, in equally offensive language, and Mr. Eissler turned to Miss Bailey.

“The Principal will have some difficulty,” said he, “in finding a teacher who could speak that child’s language. It’s Russian, pure Court Russian, and not spoken by our people except when they make a special study of it. I know it, a little.”

“And do you care to tell me,” asked Miss Bailey, “any part of what he said just now?”

“He says,” the man replied, “that he will not speak to Jews or to–and by this he means you–a seeming Christian, who makes the Jew her friend, and allows Jewish babies to touch her hands. You’ve read of the Russian autocratic spirit. Well! there you see it. Even in a little child. It’s born in them.”

“But how did it get here?” marvelled Miss Bailey. “Here, on the East Side of New York, where he must be just about as popular as a wolf cub?”

“Just about,” answered Eissler. “Of course I’m not going to pretend to tell you how this particular specimen got here. We’ve had one or two cases where the Jews, driven out, kidnapped a Russian child in revenge. And sometimes Nihilism and other Socialistic societies draw Jew and Russian together. Perhaps the boy’s mother is in Siberia digging sulphur. Perhaps she’s in Petersburg, designing becoming mourning. But from the look of the boy and the Truant Officer’s account of him, I feel pretty safe in saying she isn’t about here.”