PAGE 7
A Passport To Paradise
by
The Principal lent a substitute. Room 18 was deserted by its sovereign: the pencils were deserted by their monitor: and Mrs. Aaronsohn, Miss Bailey and Eva Gonorowsky, official interpreter, set out for the nearest drug-store where a telephone might be. They inspected several unclaimed children before, in the station of a precinct many weary blocks away, they came upon Yetta. She was more dirty and bedraggled than she had ever been, but the charm of her manner was unchanged and, suspended about her neck, she wore a policeman’s button.
“One of the men brought her in here at ten o’clock last night,” the man behind the blotter informed Miss Bailey, while Mrs. Aaronsohn showered abuse and caress upon the wanderer. “She was straying around the Bowery and she gave us a great game of talk about her father bein’ a bird. I guess he is.”
“My papa und birds is on the country. I likes I shall go there,” said Yetta from the depths of her mother’s embrace.
“There, that’s what she tells everyone. She has a card there with a Christian name and no address on it. I was going to try to identify her by looking for this Miss Constance Bailey.”
“That is my name. I am her teacher. I gave her the card because–“
“I’m monitors. I should go all places what I wants the while I’m good girls und Teacher writes it on pieces from paper. On’y I ain’t want I should come on no cops’ house. I likes I should go on the country for see my papa und birds und flowers. I says like that on a cop–I shows him the paper even–und he makes I shall come here on the cops’ house where my papa don’t stands und birds don’t stands und flowers don’t stands.”
“When next you want to go to the country,” said Teacher, “you ought to let us know. You have frightened us all dreadfully and that is a very naughty thing to do. If you ever run away again I shall have to keep the promise I made to you long and long ago when you used to come late to school. I shall have to tolerate you.”
But Yetta was undismayed. “I ain’t got no more a scare over that,” said she with a soft smile towards the brass-buttoned person behind the blotter. “Und I ain’t got no scare over cops neither; I never in mine world seen how they makes all things what is polite mit me und gives me I should eat.”
“Well,” cautioned Teacher “you must never do it again,” and turned her attention to the very erratic spelling of Sergeant Moloney’s official record of the flight of Yetta Aaronsohn.
“Say,” whispered Eva, and there was a tinge of jealousy in her soft voice; “say, who gives you the button like Patrick Brennan’s got?”
“THE COP,” answered Yetta, pointing a dirty but reverential finger towards her new divinity. “I guess maybe I turns me the dress around. Buttoned-in-front-mit-from-gold-button-suits is awful stylish. He’s got ’em.”
“Think shame how you says,” cried Eva, with loyal eyes upon the neatly buttoned and all unsuspecting back of Miss Bailey, “Ain’t you seen how is Teacher’s back?”
“Ain’t I monitors off of it?” demanded Yetta. “Sure I know how is it. On’y I don’t know be they so stylish. Cops ain’t got ’em und, oh Eva, Cops is somethin’ grand! I turns me the dress around.”