Little Citizens: The Humours of School LifeKelly, Myra
General
Little Citizens: The Humours of School Life
Kelly, Myra
Short stories; Students -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
And Morris, ever going straight to the point, replied: "You looks like
a stylish Sheeny," and waited for this intoxicating praise to bring
blushes to the light face he loved. It brought the blushes, but they
were even redder and hotter than he had expected. There was also a
gasp on which he had not counted and a queer flash in the brown eyes.
"Morris," said Teacher, "Morris, did you ever see a Sheeny with a nose
like mine?"
Morris raised his head from the red jumper, climbed off the from-silk
apron and solemnly contemplated the little bit of nose. The truth broke
over him in sickening waves. The star of his life had set; his doll
was stuffed with sawdust; his idol had feet of clay; his light-faced
lady was a Christian. And yet she was his teacher and greatly to be
loved, so he bore the knowledge, for her dear sake, as bravely as he
could. He returned to the from-silk apron, wound a short arm round the
white collar, and sobbed:
"Teacher, yiss ma'an, you'm got a Krisht nose. But don't you care, no
one couldn't never to know like you ain't a for sure Sheeny the while
you got such terrible Sheeny eyes. Oh, but they couldn't never to think
you're a Krisht. Und say, don't you have a frightened. I wouldn't never
to tell nobody. Never. I makes a swear over it. I kiss up to God. I
hopes I drops down if I tells."
At the end of a month the high heels and the festive raiment appeared
again, and the staff knew that the time for action had really come.
They must bring the Krisht to terms before he should see Teacher in
her present and irresistible array. He was always first at the trysting
place, and there they would have speech with him. They arranged to
escape from Room 18 before three o'clock. The Commander-in-Chief feigned
a nose-bleed, the Prime Minister developed an inward agony, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, after some moments of indecision, boldly
plucked out a tottering tooth and followed--bloody but triumphant--in
their wake. They found the enemy just as they had expected, and Morris,
being again elected spokesman, stepped forward and took him by his
dastard hand. The adversary yielded, thinking that Teacher had been
forced to greater caution. The Commander-in-Chief and the Chancellor
followed close behind, they having consented, in view of the enormous
issues involved, to act as scouts. Around the corner they went into
a dark and narrow alley, and, when they had reached a secluded spot
between the high wall of the school and the blank windows of a recently
burned tenement house, Morris began:
"Teacher don't wants to go on the party mit you the while she ain't
got no more that kind feeling over you."
"What?" cried the astonished Doctor Ingraham.
"She don't wants to be married mit you."
"Did Miss Bailey send you with any message to me?"
The question was so fierce that the truth was forced from the unwilling
lips of the spokesman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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