Brother and Sister Part 15

"Bring me a drink, too, will you?" Jimmie called after her.

When she brought it he forgot to say thank you because one of his friends had ridden past on his bicycle and this reminded Jimmie that he had meant to do something to his own wheel that morning. So he drank the water Sister carried out to him without a word because he was cross, and when we're cross we do not always remember to be polite.

Sister went steadily at the weeding again, and after a while Jimmie finished the lettuce, and began to weed an onion row himself.

"You can stop if you want to now," he said to Sister presently. "Don't you want to play? I can finish these."

"I'm not going to stop till they're all done," announced Sister. "Molly says the only way to get anything finished is to use plenty of per--perservance!"

Jimmie laughed and glanced at her curiously.

"I guess you mean PERSEVERANCE" he suggested, "Well, Sister, you are certainly fine help. It begins to look as though I could go swimming this afternoon after all."

Surely enough, when Mother Morrison called to them that lunch was ready, they were weeding the last onion row.

"I can finish that in fifteen minutes," declared Jimmie gaily. "You're a brick, Sister! When you want me to do something for you, just mention it, will you?"

Sister beamed. She was hot and tired and she knew her face and hands were streaked and dirty. Brother had spent the morning playing with Nellie Yarrow and Ellis Carr, and Nellie's aunt had taken them to the drug store for ice-cream soda. Yet Sister, far from being sorry for her hot, busy morning in the garden, felt very happy.

"Now you don't mind, do you?" she asked Jimmie anxiously.

"Mind what?" he said, putting the wheelbarrow away in the toolhouse.

"About the b.u.t.terflies," explained Sister.

"I'd forgotten all about them," declared Jimmie, hugging her.

CHAPTER XVIII

MICKEY GAFFNEY

Brother and Sister were very fond of playing school. They carefully saved all the old pencils and sc.r.a.ps of paper and half-used blank books that Grace and Louise and Jimmie gave them, and many mornings they spent on the porch "going to school."

Neither had ever been to school, and of course they were excited at the prospect of starting in the fall. Brother had had kindergarten lessons at home and he was ready for the first grade, while Sister would have to make her start in the Ridgeway school kindergarten.

"I wish summer would hurry up and go," complained Brother one August day. "Then we could really go to school."

"Well, don't wish that," advised Louise. "Goodness knows you'll be tired of it soon enough! Sister, what are you dragging out here?"

"My blackboard," answered Sister, almost falling over the doorsill as she pulled her blackboard--a gift from Grandmother Hastings--out onto the porch.

"Come on, Grace, we'll go in," proposed Louise, hastily gathering up her work. "If these children are going to play school there won't be any place for us! We'll go up to my room."

"I thought maybe you would be the scholars," said Brother, disappointed. "We never have enough scholars."

Louise was halfway up the stairs.

"You can play the dolls are scholars," she called back.

Mother Morrison had gone over to Grandmother Hastings to help her make blackberry jam, and Louise and Grace had been left in charge of the house.

"Let me be the teacher," begged Sister, when her blackboard was arranged to her liking. "I know how, Roddy."

"Well, all right, you can be teacher first," agreed Brother. "But after you play, then it's my turn."

Sister picked up a book and pointed to the blackboard.

"'Rithmetic cla.s.s, go to the board," she commanded.

Both she and Brother knew a good deal about what went on in cla.s.srooms, because they had listened to the older children recite.

"How much is sixty-eight times ninety-two?" asked Teacher-Sister importantly.

Brother made several marks on the blackboard with the crayon.

"Nine hundred," he answered doubtfully.

"Correct," said the teacher kindly. "Now I'll hear the cla.s.s in spellin'."

"I wish we had more scholars," complained Brother. "It's no fun with just one; I have to be everything."

"There's that little boy again--maybe he'd play," suggested Sister, pointing to the red-haired, barefooted little boy who stood staring on the walk that led up to the porch.

He could not see through the screens very clearly, but he had heard the voices of the children and, stopping to listen, had drawn nearer and nearer.

"That's Mickey Gaffney," whispered Brother. "h.e.l.lo, Mickey," he called more loudly. "Want to come play school with us?"

Mickey came up on the steps, and flattened his nose against the screen door.

"I dunno," he said doubtfully. "How do you play?"

Sister pushed open the door for him, and Mickey rather shyly looked about him.

"It's nice and shady in here," he said appreciatively. "You got a blackboard, ain't you?"

"You should say 'have' a blackboard and 'ain't' is dreadful," corrected Sister, blissfully unaware that "dreadful" was not a good word to use.

"You can use the chalk if you'll be a scholar, Mickey."

Mickey was anxious to draw on the blackboard and he consented to play "just for a little."

As Brother had said, two scholars were ever so much better than one and they had a beautiful time playing together. Mickey, in spite of his ragged clothes, and bad grammar, knew how to play, and he suggested several new things that Sister and Brother had never done.

"I been to school," boasted Mickey.