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These interruptions of the class routine were so inevitable a consequence of Swedish exercises and gymnastics that Miss Bailey was forced to sacrifice Yetta’s physical development to the general discipline and to anchor her in quiet waters during the frequent periods of drill. When she had been in time she sat at Teacher’s desk in a glow of love and pride. When she had been late she stood in a corner near the book-case and repented of her sin. And, despite all her exertions and Eva’s promptings, she was still occasionally late.

Miss Bailey was seriously at a loss for some method of dealing with a child so wistful of eyes and so damaging of habits. A teacher’s standing on the books of the Board of Education depends to a degree upon the punctuality and regularity of attendance to which she can inspire her class, and Yetta was reducing the average to untold depths.

“What happened to-day?” Teacher asked one morning for the third time in one week, and through Yetta’s noisy repentance she heard hints of “store” and “mamma.”

“Your mamma sent you to the store?” she interpreted and Yetta nodded dolefully.

“And did you give her my message about that last week? Did you tell her that she must send you to school before nine o’clock?” Again Yetta nodded, silent and resigned, evidently a creature bound upon the wheel, heart broken but uncomplaining.

“Well, then,” began Miss Bailey, struggling to maintain her just resentment, “you can tell her now that I want to see her. Ask her to come to school to-morrow morning.”

“Teacher, she couldn’t. She ain’t got time. Und she don’t know where is the school neither.”

“That’s nonsense. You live only two blocks away. She sees it every time she passes the corner.”

“She don’t never pass no corner. She don’t never come on the street. My mamma ain’t got time. She sews.”

“But she can’t sew always. She goes out, doesn’t she, to do shopping and to see her friends?”

“She ain’t got friends. She ain’t got time she should have ’em. She sews all times. Sooner I lays me und the babies on the bed by night my mamma sews. Und sooner I stands up in mornings my mamma sews. All, all, ALL times she sews.”

“And where is your father? Doesn’t he help?”

“Teacher, he’s on the country. He is pedlar mans. He walk und he walk und he walk mit all things what is stylish in a box. On’y nobody wants they should buy somethings from off of my papa. No ma’an, Missis Bailey, that ain’t how they makes mit my poor papa. They goes und makes dogs should bite him on the legs. That’s how he tells in a letter what he writes on my mamma. Comes no money in the letter und me und my mamma we got it pretty hard. We got three babies.”

“I’m going home with you this afternoon,” announced Miss Bailey in a voice which suggested neither mads nor clubs nor violence.

After that visit things were a shade more bearable in the home of the absent pedlar, and one-half of Yetta’s ambition was achieved. Teacher had a glad! There was a gentleness almost apologetic in her attitude and the hour after which an arrival should be met with a long-proud-mad-look was indefinitely postponed. And, friendly relations being established, Yetta’s craving for monitorship grew with the passing days.

When she expressed to Teacher her willingness to hold office she was met with unsatisfying but baffling generalities.

“But surely I shall let you be monitor some day. I have monitors for nearly everything under the sun, now, but perhaps I shall think of something for you.”

“I likes,” faltered Yetta; “I likes I should be monitor off of flowers.” “But Nathan Spiderwitz takes care of the window boxes. He won’t let even me touch them. Think what he would do to you.”

“Then I likes I should be monitors to set by your place when you goes by the Principal’s office.”