Immigrant children -- Fiction; Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
"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 Class 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 sturdy 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from the top of a tottering soap box to which she had withdrawn.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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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