Little Citizens: The Humours of School Life Part 13

"And who could they see that would do them more good?" demanded Mrs.

Diamantstein belligerently. "c.o.c.k them up then. It's not often they'd be let into the one room with a saint of a man like that. They'll likely be the better of it for all the rest of their poor dark days."

Teacher made one more effort towards fair play. "I think," she persisted, "that you ought to tell your husband what you intend to do.

It would be dreadful if, after all your trouble, he should not let you change the boys' religion."

"Let, indeed!" cried the bride warmly. "He can wait to do that until he's asked. I'd be long sorry to have a man like that with no bringing up of his own, as you might say, comin' between me and me duty in the sight of G.o.d. 'Let,' is it?" And the broad shoulders of Bridget Diamantstein stiffened while her clear eye flashed. "Well, I'm fond enough of that little man, but I'd break his sewin'-machine and dance on his derby before I'd see him bring up the darlin's for black Protestant Jews like himself."

And across the s.p.a.ce of many weeks, Mr. Diamantstein's voice rang again in Teacher's ears: "She's a beautiful yonge uptown lady, but easy scared. Oh, awful easy scared!"

Well, love was ever blind.

H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF HESTER STREET

"It will be difficult," said Miss Bailey, gently insubordinate, "very difficult. I have already a register of fifty-eight and seats for only fifty. It is late in the term, too; the children read and write quite easily. And you say this new boy has never been at school?"

"Never," admitted the Princ.i.p.al. "His people are rather distrustful of us. Some religious prejudice, I believe. They are the strictest of the strict. The grandfather is a Rabbi and has been educating the boy--an only child, by the way."

"Put him in the kindergarten," Miss Bailey interjected hopefully.

"No," answered the Princ.i.p.al, "he's too old for that."

"Then let him wait until he can enter with the beginners in September.

He will be really unhappy when he finds himself so far behind the others here."

"I'm afraid I must ask you to take him now," the Princ.i.p.al persisted.

"His father, the a.s.semblyman for this district, sees some advantage in sending his boy to school with the children of his supporters. But, of course, I shan't expect you to bring the child up to the grade.

Just let him stay here and be happy. If you will send your roll-book to my office I will have him entered."

And so it chanced, on an afternoon of early March, that the name of Isaac Borrachsohn was added--all unalphabetically--at the end of the roll-call of the First Reader Cla.s.s.

A writing lesson was in progress on the next morning when the new boy arrived. Miss Bailey, during her six months' reign over Room 18, had witnessed many first appearances, but never had charge of hers been borne into court on such a swelling tide of female relatives. The rather diminutive Teacher was engulfed in black-jetted capes, twinkling ear-rings, befeathered hats, warmly gleaming faces, and many flounced skirts, while the devoted eyes of the First Reader Cla.s.s caught but fleeing glimpses of its sovereign between the red roses rising, quite without visible support, above agitated bonnets.

Against this background Isaac glowed like a bird-of-paradise. The writing lesson halted. Bluntly pointed pencils paused in mid-air or between surprise-parted lips, and the First Reader Cla.s.s drew deep breaths of awe and admiration: for the new boy wore the brightest and tightest of red velvet Fauntleroy suits, the most bouffant of underlying shirts, the deepest of lace collars, the most straightly cut of Anglo-Saxon coiffures, the most far-reaching of sailor hats. Sadie Gonorowsky, the haughty Sadie, paused open-eyed in her distribution of writing papers. Morris Mogilewsky, the gentle Morris, abstractedly bit off and swallowed a piece of the gold-fish food. Isidore Belchatosky, the exquisite Isidore, pa.s.sed a stealthy hand over his closely cropped red head and knew that his reign was over.

Miss Bailey determined, in view of the frightened expression in the new-comer's eyes, to forgive his inopportune enlistment. At her cordial words of welcome the alarm spread from his wide eyes to his trembling lips, and Teacher turned to the relatives to ask: "Doesn't he speak English?"

There ensued much babbling and gesticulation. Isaac was volubly reproved, and then one of the younger and befeathered aunts made answer.

"Sure does he. Only he was bashful, and when he should get sooner over it he English just like you speaks. Just like you he speaks. He is a good boy. Where is he goin' to sit? Where is his place?"

Miss Bailey reflected with dismay that there was not an una.s.signed desk in the room. Fortunately, however, Patrick Brennan was absent on that morning--he was "making the mission" at St. Mary's church with his mother--and his queer a.s.sortment of string, b.u.t.tons, pencil stumps, and a mute and battered mouth-organ, were swept into a drawer of Teacher's desk. Isaac was installed in this hastily created vacancy, the gratified relatives withdrew, and the writing lesson was resumed.

When Isaac found himself cut entirely away from the maternal ap.r.o.n-strings, his impulse was towards the relief of tears, but his wandering gaze encountered the admiring eyes of Eva Gonorowsky and his aimless hand came in contact with the hidden store of chewing-gum with which the absent Patrick was won't to refresh himself, lightly attached to the under surface of the chair. Isaac promptly applied it to the soothing of his spirits, and decided that a school which furnished such dark and curly locked neighbours and such delectable sustenance was a pleasant place. So he accepted a long pencil from Sarah Schrodsky, and a sheet of paper from Sadie Gonorowsky, and fell to copying the writing on the board.

While he laboured--quite unsuccessfully, since all his grandsire's instructions had been in Hebrew--Miss Bailey pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s? 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 s.n.a.t.c.h Isidore's faultless writing from the deluge of his bitter tears.

When the First Reader Cla.s.s 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-l.u.s.tre 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 cla.s.s," 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 rea.s.sured 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Cla.s.s, 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 rest.i.tution 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 subst.i.tution 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.

It was nearly three o'clock when at last he found his voice. In an idle inspection of his new desk he came upon one of those combinations of a pen, a pencil, and an eraser, which gladden the young and aggravate the old. It was one of Patrick's greatest treasures and had long been Eva's envious desire, and now Patrick, chained to the side of his indignant Teacher, saw this precious, delicate, and stubborn mechanism at the mercy of his clumsy successor. Isaac wrenched and twisted without avail; Patrick's wrath grew dark; Eva shyly proffered a.s.sistance; Patrick's jealousy flamed hot. And then, before Patrick's enraged eyes, Eva and Isaac tore the combination of writing implements to fragments, in their endeavour to make it yield a point. Patrick darted upon the surprised Isaac like an avenging whirlwind, and drove a knotty little fist into the centre of the Fauntleroy costume. And then, quite suddenly, Isaac lifted up his voice: