Part 3 (2/2)
The mother was nice, he decided. Fat ones always were. It was your long, thin woman who made trouble. Look at old lady Meeker, who lived next the vacant lot on Southern Avenue, where the boys gathered occasionally on their way from school for a game of marbles or to play split-top on one of the loose, decayed fence planks. Never did a gla.s.sy go spinning from the big dirt ring through a dexterous shot, or a soft, evenly grained top split cleanly to the spear head amid the proper shouts of approval than her fretful, piercing voice put an end to further fun. Such goings-on made her head ache, she averred time and again. If they didn't leave immediately, she'd telephone the police station. Once she had said it was a ”wonder some parents wouldn't keep their children in their own back yards.” She forgot that half the gang lived in apartment buildings with back yards only designed for clothes-drying apparatus, and that the other half lived in houses built upon so cramped an acreage that the yards were no fun to play in. But grown-ups were in the habit of committing such oversights--especially the skinny, cranky ones.
As for the little girl--ah! she was good to look upon.
Her chestnut hair hung in curly ringlets below her shoulders, almost to the waist of her little white frock. Her face held a slight pallor which was strangely fascinating to the sun-tanned urchin, and her eyes were a deep, rich brown. As the conversation ended between teacher and parent, she left the platform and walked to the front seat a.s.signed her in a timid, shrinking way which stamped her as just the sort of a girl the fellows would make miserable on the slightest provocation. John's face set in an expression of heroic determination until he looked as if he'd swallowed a dose of castor oil!
[Ill.u.s.tration: _He imagines himself a hero._]
He'd like to catch Sid DuPree dancing around her in maddening circles, some afternoon, while she shrank piteously from each cry of ”'Fraid cat!
'Fraid cat!” Or that bully might throw pieces of chalk at her or pelt her with s...o...b..a.l.l.s in the winter time until she broke into incoherent sobs. Then he, John Fletcher, would show that Sid where he got off at.
He'd punch his face in, he would!
The school room door closed upon the mother's broad back, and the hum of excitement at the departure subsided into the normal undercurrent of whispering between the pupils. Pencils scratched laboriously over rough manila pads as their owners copied the questions from the board. The boy two seats ahead of John took a wad of chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on the underside of his desk. Someone over on Sid DuPree's side of the room dropped a book to the floor with a bang.
Then Miss Brown shoved back the test papers she had been correcting and glanced at the clock.
”Clear the desks,” she ordered sharply. ”Cla.s.s prepare for physical culture.”
They obeyed with alacrity, for the drills were ever a relief from the enforced inactivity of restless little bodies. Moreover, they were vastly more enjoyable than mathematical perplexities or troublesome state and river boundaries.
”Rise on toes, inhale deeply, and exhale ver-y slowly!” came the crisp command after the children had stumbled to their feet in the aisle.
”One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four.”
Heated little faces grew even more flushed as the minute hand of the big wall clock showed the pa.s.sing of five flying minutes. Next came, ”Thrust forward, upwards, and from your sides,” ”bend trunks,” to all points of the compa.s.s, ”lunge to the right and left, and thrust forward,” and a baker's dozen of other exercises designed to offset the weakening influences of cramped city environments and impure air.
In conclusion, the cla.s.s made a quarter-turn to the right and as they thus stood in parallel rows, took hold of each other's hands. At teacher's command, they swung their arms back and forth vigorously to an accompaniment of the inevitable ”one-two, one-two.”
John's was a back seat, thanks to skillful maneuvering on the opening day of school, and flaxen-haired Olga occupied the desk ahead. A day earlier he had counted himself fortunate in having her for a neighbor, for she was clever at studies which required plodding perseverance, and not at all bashful about helping a fellow when teacher pounced on him with a catch question.
Now he loathed her slow, insipid smile as his left hand released her plump right fingers at the end of the exercise. If she were only the new little girl!
Then he noticed, as a prosaic business man will notice suddenly, that a skysc.r.a.per which he has pa.s.sed daily for months is out of line with its neighbor, that the seat behind the new little girl was unoccupied and that she stood alone in the aisle during exercises. Would that he had possession of it!
To sit next her, to be able to exchange the trivial, yet important, little confidences in which fourth-graders indulge when teacher's back is turned, or to win her quick, flas.h.i.+ng smile as a reward for sharpening her pencil or for judicious prompting during a spelling lesson!
To achieve these things, he would be willing even to relinquish the powers which he held by virtue of his aisle end seat. And to allow voluntarily some other pupil to fill the inkwells, distribute pencils, scratch pads, and drawing paper at their appointed intervals, and to indulge in a hundred and one other little acts of monitors.h.i.+p is no slight sacrifice for a boy to make.
The geography lesson began. With the disregarded map of Africa in front of him as a blind, he fell to comparing the new girl with the other maidens of his acquaintance.
Take poor, inoffensive Olga for example. Her placid being seemed clumsy and her movements bovine as he pictured again the dainty grace of that new arrival as she stepped down from the teacher's platform; or Irish-eyed, boisterous, fun-loving Margaret! John had regarded her with a great deal of favor during the past two weeks, for she was a jolly little sprite with a mother who, thanks to the neighborhood's laundry patronage, contrived to clothe her daughter in a constantly varying and seldom-fitting a.s.sortment of dresses. Now echoes of her noisy laughter returned to grate upon his memory. The new little girl wouldn't laugh like that. Not she! No one with so sweet a smile had need of impudent grins. And what a contrast between Margaret's untidy mop and those long, silken curls which so fascinated him.
Yes, the boy decided that here was the being who was to be his girl for the ensuing year--to be wors.h.i.+pped from afar in all probability, but to be, nevertheless, his girl. So he drove ruthlessly from his heart all memories of a certain gray-eyed Harriette, his third-grade charmer, and erected a purely tentative shrine to the new divinity. As yet he was not quite certain of his feelings--and there might be a later addition to the room!
In the meantime, there was the vacant seat. Temporary idol or not, he longed for possession of it, but he knew that although he moved heaven and earth to support a direct request for transfer, Miss Brown would never a.s.sign it to him. Many a past bitter experience had shown the most harmless desires to mask deep-laid juvenile plots, and she was singularly wary and distrustful. A way must be found to trick her into giving him the occupancy.
He ate his meat and potatoes very quietly and thoughtfully that noon, a procedure so contrary to his usual actions that his mother asked him if he felt well. He nodded abstractedly, went upstairs to the big, sunny sewing room, searched the family needlecase for a long stiff darning needle and extracted several rubber bands from the red cardboard box on the library table. Then he sauntered off to wait in the school yard for a.s.sembly bell, with the air of a military strategist who has planned a well-laid campaign and is sanguine of success.
The tramp of juvenile feet up the broad, school stairways grew steadily less until silence reigned in the big, empty corridors. Miss Brown sat down at her desk, drew out the black-covered record book from the right-hand drawer, and gave a few rea.s.suring pats to her dark, orderly hair. Scurrying footsteps pounded up to the cloak room entrance. A moment later, Thomas Jackson, still panting and breathless, stumbled into his seat and mopped the beads of perspiration from his dark-skinned forehead with his coatsleeve. Then the tardy bell rang and Miss Brown began roll call.
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