Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and SchoolWright, Mabel Osgood
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Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Birds -- Juvenile literature; Birds -- New England
Tommy Todd looked relieved, for, he reasoned, if teacher knew there were
two rats in his desk, she would not have looked pleased. In a few words
Miss Wilde explained the happenings, cautioned them to be very good, and
saying, “Right, left, right, left,” was about to open the door for the
children to march in, when Sarah Barnes asked, “Teacher, what is her
name, so we can call her by it?” Then teacher realized that she didn’t
know. But as the door opened Sarah said, in a very loud whisper, as
whispers are apt to sound louder than the natural voice, “Why, it’s my
Gray Lady!” and so in truth it was.
Teacher watched them until they took their seats, and then gently closed
the door behind her. For a moment no one spoke. Tommy Todd peeped
cautiously into his desk to be sure the rats were safe, and found to his
dismay that they were gone. Inwardly he hoped they wouldn’t get loose,
for Gray Lady didn’t look as if she would like rats, which showed that
after only one glance he wished to please her, while at the same time
the name by which they first knew her became fixed in the mind of every
child.
III
GRAY LADY AT SCHOOL
The silence inside the school continued a full minute, that seemed like
an hour, and the dripping of the rain from the gutter was so plain that
Sarah found herself counting the drops—“One—two—three—four—splash!”
Fifteen pairs of eyes were fastened upon the newcomer, and, as she
caught the various questions in them, the colour in her cheeks deepened.
Suddenly she recognized her little friend whom she had met on the
hillside the week before. “Sarah Barnes,” said Gray Lady, “will you not
tell me the names of your schoolmates and introduce me to them? It is
always so much more pleasant when we are looking at people, places, or
things to know what they are called.”
Then Sarah, delighted at being remembered when she had begun to be quite
sure that all her hopes were in vain, guided by an inborn instinct of
politeness that told her it would not be civil to stand at her desk and
call out the various names, marched solemnly up to the teacher’s desk
and, beginning in the front row with her own little sister Mary,
repeated the fifteen names in full, with the greatest care and
distinctness, and each child, not knowing what else to do, bobbed up and
answered, “Present,” the same as if teacher had been calling the roll.
When Sarah had finished, she was quite out of breath, for some of the
names were very long; the last, that of the one little Slav in the
school, Zella Francesca Mowralski, being also hard to pronounce.
“Thank you,” said Gray Lady; “I think that I can remember the first
names at least. But now that you have presented your friends to me,
won’t you kindly present me to them? You know who I am and where I live,
do you not?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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