FullReads

” The time is out of joint;–O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right !”

Up into the quiet air went his timid hand. Teacher, knowing him in his more garrulous moods, ignored the threatened interruption of Bertha’s spirited resume, but the windmill action of the little arm attracted the Honourable Tim’s attention.

“The best of boys wants you,” he suggested, and Teacher perforce asked:

“Well, Morris, what is it?”

Not until he was on his feet did the Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl, appreciate the enormity of the mission he had undertaken. The other children began to understand, and watched his struggle for words and breath with sympathy or derision, as their natures prompted. But there are no words in which one may politely mention ineffective safety-pins to one’s glass of fashion. Morris’s knees trembled queerly, his breathing grew difficult, and Teacher seemed a very great way off as she asked again:

“Well, what is it, dear?”

Morris panted a little, smiled weakly, and then sat down. Teacher was evidently puzzled, the “Comp’ny” alert, the Principal uneasy.

“Now, Morris,” Teacher remonstrated, “you must tell me what you want.”

But Morris had deserted his etiquette and his veracity, and murmured only:

“Nothings.”

“Just wanted to be noticed,” said the Honourable Tim. “It is easy to spoil them.” And he watched the best of boys rather closely, for a habit of interrupting reading lessons, wantonly and without reason, was a trait in the young of which he disapproved.

When this disapprobation manifested itself in Mr. O’Shea’s countenance, the loyal heart of Morris interpreted it as a new menace to his sovereign. No later than yesterday she had warned them of the vital importance of coherence. “Every one knows,” she had said, “that only common little boys and girls come apart. No one ever likes them,” and the big stranger was even now misjudging her.

Again his short arm agitated the quiet air. Again his trembling legs upheld a trembling boy. Again authority urged. Again Teacher asked:

“Well, Morris, what is it, dear?”

All this was as before, but not as before was poor harassed Miss Bailey’s swoop down the aisle, her sudden taking of Morris’s troubled little face between her soft hands, the quick near meeting with her kind eyes, the note of pleading in her repetition:

“What do you want, Morris?”

He was beginning to answer when it occurred to him that the truth might make her cry. There was an unsteadiness about her upper lip which seemed to indicate the possibility. Suddenly he found that he no longer yearned for words in which to tell her of her disjointment, but for something else–anything else–to say.

His miserable eyes escaped from hers and wandered to the wall in desperate search for conversation. There was no help in the pictures, no inspiration in the plaster casts, but on the blackboard he read, “Tuesday, January twenty-first, 1902.” Only the date, but he must make it serve. With Teacher close beside him, with the hostile eye of the Honourable Tim upon him, hedged round about by the frightened or admiring regard of the First-Reader Class, Morris blinked rapidly, swallowed resolutely, and remarked:

“Teacher, this year’s Nineteen-hundred-and-two,” and knew that all was over.

The caressing clasp of Teacher’s hands grew into a grip of anger. The countenance of Mr. O’Shea took on the beatified expression of the prophet who has found honour and verification in his own country.

“The best of boys has his off days and this is one of them,” he remarked.

“Morris,” said Teacher, “did you stop a reading lesson to tell me that? Do you think I don’t know what the year is? I’m ashamed of you.”

Never had she spoken thus. If the telling had been difficult to Morris when she was “glad on him,” it was impossible now that she was a prey to such evident “mad feelings.” And yet he must make some explanation. So he murmured: “Teacher, I tells you ‘scuse. I know you knows what year stands, on’y it’s polite I tells you something, und I had a fraid.”