FullReads

While he laboured–quite unsuccessfully, since all his grandsire’s instructions had been in Hebrew–Miss Bailey passed from desk to desk on a tour of inspection and exhortation, slightly annoyed and surprised to find that the excitement consequent upon Isaac Borrachsohn’s introduction had not yet subsided. Eva Gonorowsky was flagrantly inattentive, and Teacher paused to point an accusing finger at the very erratic markings which she had achieved.

“Eva,” said she, “why do you keep your writing so very far from the line?”

“I ain’t so big,” Eva responded meekly, “und so I makes mistakes. I tells you ‘scuse.”

“Honey,” responded Miss Bailey, her wrath quite turned away by this soft answer, “you could do beautifully if you would only look at the board instead of staring at the new boy.”

“Yiss ma’am,” acquiesced Eva. “But, oh, Teacher, Missis Bailey, ain’t he the sweet dude!”

“Do you think so? Well, you need not stop writing to look at him, because you will be seeing him every day.

“In this class? Oh, ain’t that fine!” Eva whispered. “My, ain’t his mamma put him on nice mit red-from-plush suits and stylish hair-cuts!”

“Well, Isidore Belchatosky has a velvet suit,” said the gentle-hearted Miss Bailey, as she noticed the miserable eyes of the deposed beau travelling from his own frayed sleeve to the scarlet splendour across the aisle.

“But’s it’s black,” sneered the small coquette, and Teacher was only just in time to snatch Isidore’s faultless writing from the deluge of his bitter tears.

When the First Reader Class filed down the yard for recess, Miss Bailey was disgusted to find that Isaac Borrachsohn’s admiring audience increased until it included every boy in the school young enough to be granted these twenty minutes of relaxation during the long morning. He was led away to a distant corner, there to receive tribute of deference, marbles, candy, tops, and political badges. But he spoke no word. Silently and gravely he held court. Gravely and silently he suffered himself to be led back to Room 18. Still silently and still gravely he went home at twelve o’clock.

At a quarter before one on that day, while Morris Mogilewsky and Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitors of Gold-Fish and Window Boxes, were waiting dejectedly for the opening of the school doors and reflecting that they must inevitably find themselves supplanted in their sovereign’s regard–for Teacher, though an angel, was still a woman, and therefore sure to prefer gorgeously arrayed ministers–there entered to them Patrick Brennan, fortified by the morning’s devotion, and reacting sharply against the morning’s restraint.

“Fellars,” he began jubilantly; “I know where we can hook a banana. And the Ginney’s asleep. Come on!”

His colleagues looked at him with lack-lustre eyes. “I don’t need no bananas,” said Morris dispiritedly. “They ain’t so awful healthy fer me.”

“Me too,” Nathan agreed. “I et six once und they made me a sickness.”

“Bananas!” urged Patrick. “Bananas, an’ the man asleep! What’s the matter with ye anyway?”

“There’s a new boy in our class,” Morris answered. “Und he’s a dude. Und Teacher’s lovin’ mit him.”

“Und he sets in your place,” added Nathan.

“I’ll break his face if he tries it again,” cried Patrick hotly. “Who let him sit there?”

“Teacher,” wailed Morris. “Ain’t I tell you how she’s lovin’ mit him?”

“And where’s all my things?” Patrick demanded with pardonable curiosity. “Where am I to sit?”

“She makes you should set by her side,” Morris reassured him. “Und keep your pencil in her desk. It could be awful nice fer you. You sets right by her.”

“I’ll try it for a day or two,” said Patrick grandly. “I’ll see how I’ll like it.”

For the first hour he liked it very well. It was fun to sit beside Miss Bailey, to read from her reader, to write at her desk, to look grandly down upon his fellows, and to smile with condescension upon Eva Gonorowsky. But when Teacher opened her book of Fairy Tales and led the way to the land of magic Patrick discovered that the chewing gum, with which he was accustomed to refresh himself on these journeys, was gone. Automatically he swept his hand across the under surface of his chair. It was not there. He searched the drawer in which his treasures had been bestowed. Nor there. He glanced at the usurper in his rightful place, and saw that the jaws of Isaac moved rhythmically and placidly. Hot anger seized Patrick. He rose deliberately upon his sturdy legs and slapped the face of that sweet dude so exactly and with such force that the sound broke upon the quiet air like the crack of a revolver. Teacher, followed by the First Reader Class, rushed back from Fairy Land, and the next few minutes were devoted to separating the enraged Patrick from the terrified Isaac, who, in the excitement of the onslaught, had choked upon the casus belli, and could make neither restitution nor explanation. When Isaac was reduced, at the cost of much time and petting on Miss Bailey’s part, to that stage of consolation in which departing grief takes the form of loud sobs, closely resembling hiccoughs and as surprising to the sufferer as to his sympathizers, Patrick found himself in universal disfavour. The eyes of the boys, always so loyal, were cold. The eyes of the girls, always so admiring, were reproachful. The eyes of Miss Bailey, always so loving, were hard and angry. Teacher professed herself too grieved and surprised to continue the interrupted story, and Patrick was held responsible for the substitution of a brisk mental arithmetic test in which he was easily distanced by every boy and girl in the room. But Isaac was still silent. No halcyon suggestion beginning, “Suppose I were to give you a dollar and you spent half of it for candy,” no imaginary shopping orgie, could tempt him into speech.