FullReads

Mrs. Gonorowsky paid the exorbitant price of a cent to have her official postcard read by an interpreter. Neighbors volunteered for this service, but she would have none of them. She wanted an authoritative reading, and having got it, she sat down to await the return of Eva.

“So-o-oh,” ran the maternal greeting, “you comes three times late on the school mit dirty faces.” Eva hung her guilty head. “And I wash you every day the face, und send you on the block plenty time? Hein?” Eva nodded the guilty head. “Und now comes such a card from off the school sayin’ how you comes late und dirty, und the Principal, he wants he shall see me to-morrow, quarter after three.” A silence followed these thunderous words. Eva’s guilt engulfed her, although hers was the clearest conscience among all the candidates for return tickets. Her gentle spirit had been unequal to the orgy in which braver souls were wallowing.

“I wants,” she whispered now, “I wants I shall be put back. I don’t likes it by Miss Blakeses room. I ain’t monitors off of nothings, und Miss Blake she hollers on me, und Patrick he is put back. I likes I shall be put back too.”

“Sooner you feels like that,” said Mrs. Gonorowsky with sound logic, “why aind you stayed back by Miss Bailey’s room? Aind you told me how you wants you shall be ‘moted, and learn off a new book?”

“Not ‘out Miss Bailey,” Eva protested. “I couldn’t to learn ‘out Miss Bailey. I want Miss Bailey shall be ‘moted too.”

“Und why ain’t she ‘moted?” demanded the voice of reason.

At this question–its answer had long been torture to her loyal little heart–Eva broke into wild tears. Changing over to the voice of love, Mrs. Gonorowsky soothed and cuddled and petted her until Eva found speech again.

“It’s somethin’ fierce,” she whispered. “In all my world I ain’t never seen how it is fierce. I shall better, maybe, whisper mit you in the ear. It’s like this: She ain’t smart enough. Becky Zalmanowsky, she ain’t smart enough, und Hymie Solomon, he ain’t smart enough, und Jakey Fishandler, he is a greeney, und Teacher, she gets left back mit them.”

“Gott!” cried Mrs. Gonorowsky, “who says she ain’t smart enough?”

“The Principal, maybe,” wailed Eva.

“All right,” said her mother, whose admiration for Miss Bailey was great and of long standing. “I goes on the school to-morrow for see him at quarter after three.”

When Mrs. Gonorowsky reached the big school-house, she found that her audience with the Principal was not to be a private one, for a dozen or more mothers were gathered in the yard. A regular investigation was on foot. Every one concerned had recognized that there was some organization about Room 19’s sedition, and Miss Blake had first repudiated the acquaintance and friendship of Miss Bailey, and had then gone on to repudiate all responsibility for what she now termed “Bailey’s Brats.”

“I refuse–I must refuse–to teach that class,” said she to the harassed Principal. “If you can’t arrange to exchange me with some other teacher, I shall apply for a transfer to an up-town school. If that Miss Bailey is so crazy about these children, why don’t you let her keep them for another term? Every one seems to think she’s a crackerjack teacher, so I guess she can get along in second term work, and I can take that new class of hers.”

“I’ll think of it,” said the Principal, as the janitor came to tell him that the mothers were overflowing his office.

Before his interview with them, he turned into Room 18, and there he found the ringleaders of Room 19’s rebellion. Though beatified they wore a chastened, propitiatory air, for Miss Bailey had just been lecturing them. She looked as distressed as she was by the whole situation.

“I just stepped in,” the Principal explained, “to see how many of them were still chained to their oars. Rather a luxurious galley this, don’t you think?”