Little Aliens Part 2

"Who gives the prizes?" he demanded, as he and Patrick were superintending the construction of a grand stand made of soap-boxes and a broken sofa. "Where is the prizes, and who gives 'em?" he repeated.

"Mind your own business," was Patrick's useful answer. It showed a bold front and left time for thought.

"Who gives 'em?" insisted Nathan.

"Don't _you_ worry 'bout prizes," muttered Patrick darkly, "they ain't none of _your_ business. You got a swell chanst to git any prizes in my yard. Not when I'm in it, ye don't."

Thus with Nathan. But with Morris he was more frank.

"There's one thing," said he, when he found that crack long-jumper in the boys' yard at luncheon time, "what I'm going to let _you_ do."

"Is it nice for me?" queried the Custodian of Gold Fish.

"Great!" answered Patrick. "I'm goin' to let ye ast Miss Bailey to the party."

Morris glowed with pride and importance. "I likes that," he breathed.

"Well, you can do it. Ye don't want to tell her what kind of a party it is. Just go up to her after school and say that 'we invites her to come to my yard at ten o'clock in the mornin', and bring seven prizes with her.'"

"Oh--oh-h-h! I couldn't to say nothings like that," Morris remonstrated.

"I guess you don't know what is polite. I don't know has Missis Bailey got seven prizes."

"She'll get 'em all right, all right," Patrick a.s.sured him; "ain't she always givin' 'em around? You just tell her 'ten o'clock and seven prizes.' It's all right, I tell you. I could'a showed ye the picture on that paper of a lady standin' up givin' out the prizes. An' Miss Bailey's the only lady goin' to be there."

"It ain't polite," Morris maintained. But he had during these last athletic weeks broken so many of his canons and his laws that he accepted this last command with more docility than Patrick had expected.

"A party!" cried Miss Bailey, "now isn't that nice? And for to-morrow morning. Of course I'll be there. And what kind of a party is it to be, dear?"

"It's something you says you likes you shall see. Und on the party you shall see it. Und you shall have a s'prise over it."

"You grow more interesting every moment," said Teacher. "Tell me more. I love surprises."

"There ain't no more," Morris answered, "on'y," and he took his conversational running-jump, "on'y maybe you shall bring seven prizes mit. I says maybe you ain't got seven prizes. On'y Patrick says I shall say it out like that, 'you shall come on the party und bring seven prizes.'"

"Seven!" reflected Teacher. "That is rather a large order, but I think I can manage it. Have you any idea, Morris, of what kind they should be?"

"Teacher, yiss, ma'am," Morris answered, "'fer-boys' prizes."

"I think I understand," and Miss Bailey smiled at him. "You may tell Patrick that I and 'seven fer-boys' prizes' will be at his house in the morning."

She regarded the subject as closed. Not so Morris. Through all the succeeding occupations of the afternoon an idea persisted with him, and when the Teacher left the building at last she found him waiting for her on the wide steps.

"You want me, dear?" she asked.

"I shall tell you somethings," Morris began in evident embarra.s.sment.

"Yes, dear."

"It's over those prizes."

"Yes, Morris."

"Miss Bailey, it's like this. You don't need to care sooner you ain't got on'y _six_ prizes. Seven prizes I guess costs bunches und bunches from money. So six prizes comes on Patrick's yard, that's all right.

Stands one boy what don't needs no prize."

"He must be a strange little boy," commented Teacher. "I never before heard of a boy who didn't like prizes."

"Oh, he likes 'em; _how_ he likes 'em. I ain't said he ain't got feelin's over 'em. On'y it's like this: he don't needs you shall buy prizes for him the whiles you got to buy six prizes already."

"I think I understand, dear," Teacher answered, and she set out for the shopping district and bought six prizes of great glitter and little worth. But the seventh was such a watch as a boy might use and treasure through all the years of his boyhood.

The great day dawned bright and clear. Miss Bailey's entrance, punctual and parcel-laden, in a festive frilly frock and a flowery hat, caused something almost like silence to fall upon the scene of the coming tournament. Eva Gonorowsky clasped Teacher's unoccupied hand, Sarah Schodsky and Yetta Aaronsohn relieved her of her bundles. Sadie Gonorowsky gesticulated madly from the place upon the sofa which she was reserving with all the expanse of her outspread skirt.

Teacher approached the grand stand and took her place. The feminine First Readers swarmed upon the soap boxes. But neither leg nor arm nor even eye was moved by the seven masculine First Readers drawn up in the centre of the yard. Flags waved in such profusion and such uniformity that even Miss Bailey's obligation to her hosts could not blind her to the fact that she had at last found the fifty-two American flags pasted together by the First Reader Cla.s.s when Washington's Birthday was in the air and the offing. Two weeks ago she had missed them out of the cupboard, and neither janitor nor Monitor could give her tidings of them. They looked very well, she was forced to admit, dangling from high fence and clothes line. And very bright and joyant was the whole scene.

The little girls in their bright colors. The sky so blue. Mrs. Brennan's pear tree in st.u.r.dy bloom. All was brilliant with a sense of Spring save the seven dark-clothed figures in the centre of the yard.

"Can you guess what kind from party it is?" shrieked Sadie Gonorowsky from the top of a tottering soap box to which she had withdrawn.

"Why, it's--" Teacher began, recognizing some elements of the scene, but made uncertain by the seven dark little figures, "of course it's----"

"It's 'Games in Gardens,'" shouted the little girls, waving their flags like mad and "scupping" so energetically that two disappeared, "it's Games in Gardens, und you're goin' to have a s'prise."

One of the dark and silent figures found speech and motion.

"Set down an' shut up," commanded Patrick Brennan. "We're goin' to begin."

The shutting up would have been effected automatically by the next proceeding of the seven. They laid violent hands upon themselves and in an instant a flat little heap of dark clothes marked the centre of the yard, and Patrick Brennan, Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, Isidore Applebaum, Nathan Spiderwitz, Isidore Wishnewsky, Isaac Belchatosky, and Morris Mowgelewsky stood forth in costumes reported by Isaac Borrachsohn, sanctioned by Miss Bailey, and owned by members of the audience.

A moment of tense silence followed. Every eye sought Teacher, and Constance Bailey knew that upon her first word or look depended success or failure, pride or everlasting shame. There was no time to wonder how the mistake arose. No time to remember what she had said that could possibly have been interpreted to mean this. They were her gallant little knights doing her uncomprehended bidding, and trying--at what sacrifice she guessed--to pleasure their liege lady.

Again she had blundered. Again she had failed to quite bridge the distance. The wrong word lay somewhere back in her effort to undo Isaac Borrachsohn's mischief. And she had wrought mischief ten times worse.

The most devoted of her charges stood there in the clear May sunshine; the funniest, most pathetic, most ridiculous little figures, with their thin little arms and legs and their long little necks: proud, embarra.s.sed, wistful.

"My dear boys," she cried suddenly, "how fine you look! How beautiful and--and--clean you are," she went on a little bit at random. "And now we are going to have games, and the girls and I will cheer the winners."

"Be ye s'prised?" yelled Patrick in irrepressible pride.

"Dreadfully!" she answered. "Dreadfully, Patrick dear."

"Then we'll begin," answered the master of ceremonies. "_One_, git in yer places! _Two_, fer a show! _Three_, to make ready! And _four_ to _GO_."

Upon his final word the "Games in Gardens" began. The two Isidores and Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein rushed madly round the yard. Patrick tried to urge the others to follow, but Morris had elected the long jump--and the long jump he would perform, all protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Nathan Spiderwitz grasped the clothes pole and vaulted with great accuracy into the left wing of the grand stand. Isaac Belchatosky had secured a dilapidated ball from an abandoned bowling-alley, and he "put the shot" in all directions to his own satisfaction and the audience's terror until run into and overturned by Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein.

Shrill cries went up from the audience. The two boys arose unhurt, but the feelings of Bertha Binderwitz and Eva Kidansky were not thereby soothed.

"I guess I gets killed off of my mamma," wailed Bertha when she saw that one whole side of Isaac Belchatosky was smeared with mud. And when Nathan Spiderwitz was reclaimed from the soap boxes, with a long piece of cambric ruffle trailing behind him, Sadie Gonorowsky fell into such an agony of apprehension that Miss Bailey felt called upon for a promise to repair the damage ere another sun should set. Meantime Patrick was not idle. Disdaining compet.i.tion, he went through all the "events," one after another until the perspiration was thick upon his forehead, and Eva Gonorowsky was trembling with excitement.

"My mamma don't know," she informed Miss Bailey over and over again. But owing perhaps to her watchful care, perhaps to a natural apt.i.tude for athletics, Patrick escaped unspotted and unscathed.