Little Aliens Part 3

He turned hand-springs upon the heap of clothes. He stood upon his head upon the same rostrum until his eyes bulged, and Miss Bailey implored him to desist. He wrested the shot from Isidore Wishnewsky, a person of no spirit, and then he "put" it neatly into the waist line of its owner, who promptly sat back gasping.

"Don't you dast to set, Isidore Wishnewsky," shrilled Sarah Schodsky in a panic. "I guess you dunno what is polite for you. Sooner somebody lends you somethings it ain't polite you should set on it! Ain't it fierce how he makes, Missis Bailey?"

"It is a little rude," Miss Bailey admitted in a voice as unsteady as Isidore Wishnewsky.

"I never in my world seen how they all makes," said Yetta Aaronsohn, that authority on Hygiene and the Care of the Body. "They could to make themselves awful sicknesses over it--home sicknesses, even, und lay-on-the-bed sicknesses, und comes-the-doctor sicknesses."

"Oh, I hope not!" Teacher rallied the pessimistic Yetta, "though they certainly do seem to be getting very tired."

By this time the track team of the First Reader Cla.s.s had exhausted itself and its repertoire, and came forward, hot but confident, for its laurels. There was something for each one, and for each a little word of special commendation. And if Teacher's voice was more tender, her eyes more gentle when Morris's turn came, she still was gentle and tender enough with all of them.

At the end she made a short address to victors and audience alike. She thanked them for their great effort to give her pleasure, and for the great pleasure they had given her, and then added:

"When I brought your prizes this morning I had no idea what the party was to be like, and so of course I didn't get just what I would have given you if I had known. But now that I do know how wonderfully our boys can jump and run, I shall bring for each boy on Monday morning a regular running suit, and whenever you have 'Games in Gardens' again you won't have to borrow anything. Perhaps the Princ.i.p.al would like you to have 'Games in Gardens' on the roof some afternoon, and you could invite the other cla.s.ses. I am sure they'd love it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I never in my world seen how they all makes"]

"You liked it all right, all right, didn't you, Teacher?" demanded Patrick.

"Liked it!" she echoed. "Why, I was simply delighted."

"Und s'prised?" questioned Morris.

"I was never more so in all my long, long life," answered Constance Bailey with entire conviction.

"A BRAND FROM THE BURNING"

"Where did you get him?" said the Princ.i.p.al.

"In the back yard of one of those double-deckers down by the river,"

answered the Truant Officer. "Ain't he the bird!" he added in professional enthusiasm. "I've been chasing him for two or three days.

He's just about as easy to handle as an eel, and to-day he bit me as we were coming along. He's a beauty, he is!"

"And you say he doesn't speak Yiddish?" queried the Princ.i.p.al.

"He don't speak the kind I do," the other answered. "I get on all right with the rest of the folks around here, and I certainly never expected to have trouble rounding up a kid that ain't knee-high to a gra.s.shopper. No, you don't, sonny!" he broke off as his charge was sliding toward the door. "You've got to stay here now and have a nice lady learn you how to read and write and cipher."

The boy looked up at his captor with the wide, desperate eyes of an animal at bay, recognizing his helplessness, but determined to bite and fight to the very end.

"Will you look at that now?" the Truant Officer exclaimed; "he thinks every one's going to hurt him. That's the way some of those kids feel."

"Oh, he'll soon get over that here," the Princ.i.p.al laughed. "I've seen them much wilder on their first appearance. The teachers know how to handle them."

Left alone with his new charge, the Princ.i.p.al turned and studied him.

The boy was in the corner, his eyes fixed on the closed door, his whole little body tense. His visible clothing consisted of a man's coat, cut short at the sleeves and pinned across the breast. The child was so small that this reached far below his knees, where it was supplemented by ragged stockings and shoes. He was unkempt and dirty, even according to the unexacting East Side's standard. But there was something about the poise of his head and the slow, lithe movements of his body that differentiated him from the ordinary street waif. There was no fear in him--no pleading, no snivelling, nothing but a harsh, almost mature, defiance.

"Come here!" said the Princ.i.p.al. At the sound of his voice the child turned and looked at him, and the man found himself returning the cool regard of a pair of violet-blue eyes. Blue eyes picked up in the heart of that dusky neighborhood, where he had learned to expect all children's eyes to be either black or brown!

"I wonder what he is, and where he comes from," he sighed, as he rang the bell and summoned the teacher who generally acted as his interpreter. "David Copperfield's poor old friend, Mr. d.i.c.k, would find plenty of use for his famous prescription, 'wash him,' if he were in my place."

Miss Rosen soon arrived and began her usual inquiries as to name, age, residence. The little stranger heard her through, and then he uttered a sharp three or four word sentence, clear cut, imperious; and Miss Rosen, a sweet and portly lady of fifteen years' faithful teaching, flushed to the edge of her hard black pompadour, and stared, incredulous, at the ragged form before her.

"Well," said the Princ.i.p.al, as she made no effort at translation. "What does he say?"

"I do not speak his language," she answered.

"And yet you understand him?"

"I understand him--yes----"

"Well," repeated the Princ.i.p.al, in no mind to allow one small boy to upset his morning's routine, "well, if you understand him, tell me what he said. What language was that he used?"

"Russian," she replied, "pure Russian, and what he said is the only Russian phrase which many of the Jewish people ever hear. I have not heard it since I escaped from Russia with my parents years and years ago. I had hoped never to hear it again. I must refuse to translate it to you."

When she had gone, all shaken, back to her cla.s.s, the Princ.i.p.al shook a remonstrating head at his captive, who was by this time examining the book-case with a disparaging eye. Catching the man's glance, he made some remark in his liquid speech, and thumped his chest.

"Perhaps so, my boy," Mr. Trevar agreed. "But I'm studying your case. No English, horrid temper, young wild animal, in fact. It's hard on the girl," he admitted to his own conscience; "but I guess it's a case for Room 18," and rang the bell again and sent word to Room 18 to summon Miss Bailey to his office.

"We've caught a tartar," he told her, "almost literally a Tartar. He seems to have strong racial prejudices, and I shall have to a.s.sign him to you until he learns a little English."

"But if he speaks no English at all," Miss Bailey remonstrated--for children of this kind were her greatest trial, and she was already laboring with three of them--"would he not be happier with one of the teachers who could understand him?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I must refuse to translate it to you"]

"Ah! but they wouldn't," he replied; "that's just the point. Miss Rosen tells me he's a Russian and not a Jew. He said something extremely rude to her just now. No, you'll have to take him, at least for a few days, until I can make some inquiries about him. We shall have to get the Truant Officer to give us the child's name and address. Will you take him with you now?"

Constance Bailey had a smile to which many a lonely frightened little novice had yielded a shy and sweet response, but there was no answering smile here. She stretched out a hand to take the boy's, but he eluded her, reached the door, opened it, and stood at stiff attention until she had preceded him into the hall.

"Well, I'll be blamed!" reflected the Princ.i.p.al. "Manners, and princely ones at that!"

On the way to Room 18, Miss Bailey's newest responsibility walked beside her with a free and upright carriage strangely at variance with the shoes he walked in. Once or twice she spoke to him, and his answer was an uncomprehending but courteous inclination of the little head. Once he spoke to her. It was when they pa.s.sed the platform in the a.s.sembly Room.

He pointed to the piano and said something eagerly, authoritatively, in that language whose like Miss Bailey had never heard. She nodded and smiled at him, and they fared on together.

Again, at the door of Room 18, he punctiliously allowed her to precede him. But as he entered after her and met the full regard of Room 18's dark eyes, he stopped and returned the glances bent upon him with a cool, insulting indifference.

"This is a new little boy," announced Miss Bailey, "to whom I want you all to be very kind. He doesn't speak much English, but we shall teach him that. Morris, he will sit near you."

Morris Mowgelewsky, all timid friendliness, approached the stranger.

Here surely was a queer new little boy in a "from man's" coat, and an exceeding dirty face; yet if Miss Bailey hailed him as a new little friend, then as a new little friend he must be made welcome.

"Talk to him a moment, Morris," Teacher commanded. "See if he won't tell you what his name is."

Morris obeyed, and the child answered him in the words that had so upset Miss Rosen. But Morris had left Russia when he was only two years old, and the phrase held no meaning for him, though the tone made him pause.