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“Teacher, what you think? I’m got a present for you,” and then recommenced his search in another layer of his many flannels. His efforts being at length crowned with success, he drew forth and spread before Teacher’s admiring eyes a Japanese paper napkin.

“My sister,” he explained. “She gets it to a weddinge.”

“Oh, Isidore,” cried the flattered Teacher; “it’s very pretty, isn’t it?”

“Teacher–yiss ma’an,” gurgled Isidore. “It’s stylish. You could to look on how stands birds on it and flowers. Mine sister she gives it to me und I gives it to you. I don’t need it. She gives me all times something the while she’s got such a kind feelin’ over me. She goes all times on weddinges. Most all her younge lady friends gettin’ married; ain’t it funny?”

At the fateful word “married,” the uneasy cabinet closed in about Teacher. Their three pairs of eyes clung to her face as Isidore repeated:

“All gettin’ married. Ain’t it funny?”

“Well, no, dear,” answered Teacher musingly. “You know nearly all young ladies do it.”

Patrick took a pin from Teacher’s desk and kneeled to tie his shoe-string. When he rose the point of the pin projected half an inch beyond the frayed toe of his shoe, and he was armed. Morris was most evidently losing courage–he was indeed trying to steal away when Patrick pressed close beside him and held him to his post.

“Teacher,” said Isidore suddenly, as a dreadful thought struck him, “be you a lady or be you a girl?”

And Teacher, being of Hibernian ancestry, answered one question with another:

“Which do you think, Isidore?”

“Well,” Isidore answered, “I don’t know be you a forsure lady or be you a forsure girl. You wears your hair so tucked up und your dress so long down like you was a lady, but you laffs und tells us stories like you was a girl. I don’t know.”

Clearly this was Morris’s opening. Patrick pierced his soul with a glance of scorn and simultaneously buried the pin in his quaking leg. Thus encouraged, Morris rushed blindly into the conversation with:

“Say, Teacher, Miss Bailey, be you goin’ to get married?” and then dropped limply against her shoulder.

The question was not quite new to Teacher and, as she bestowed Morris more comfortably on her knee, she pondered once again. She knew that, for the present, her lines had fallen in very pleasant places, and she felt no desire to change to pastures new. And yet–and yet–. The average female life is long, and a Board, however thoughtful as to salary and pension, is an impersonal lord and master, and remote withal. So she answered quite simply, with her cheek against the boy’s:

“Well, perhaps so, Morris. Perhaps I shall, some day.”

“Teacher, no ma’an, Miss Bailey!” wailed the Monitor of the Gold-Fish. “Don’t you go and get married mit nobody. So you do you couldn’t be Teacher by us no more, and you’re a awful nice teacher by little boys. You ain’t too big. Und say, we’d feel terrible bad the while you goes and gets married mit somebody–terrible bad.”

“Should you really, now?” asked Teacher, greatly pleased. “Well, dear, I too should be lonely without you.”

Here Isidore Wishnewsky, who considered this conversation as his cherished own, and saw it being torn from him, determined to outdo the favoured Morris as a squire of dames.

“Teacher, yiss ma’an,” he broke in. “We’d all feel terrible the while we ain’t got you by teacher. All the boys und all the girls they says like this–it’s the word in the yard–we ain’t never had a teacher smells so nice like you.”

While Teacher was in the lenient mood, resulting from this astounding tribute, Nathan forged yet another chain for her securing.

“Teacher,” said he, “you wouldn’t never go and get married mit nobody ‘out saying nothing to somebody, would you?”

“Indeed, no, my dear,” Miss Bailey assured him. “When I marry, you and Patrick and Morris shall be ushers–monitors, you know. Now are you happy, you funny little chaps?”