45CHAPTER VANOTHER SCHOOLROOM
“Charles Black!” ejaculated Miss Mason, “what do you mean by this nonsense? You can’t go to the blackboard, and you can’t go downstairs. Are you sick? Why can’t you go?”
Charlie half rose from his seat, then sank back.
“I’m stuck fast!” he wailed. “It’s the taffy.”
The class began to laugh.
“That will do,” Miss Mason checked them. “Where did you get this taffy, Charles?”
“I took it,” admitted Charlie sullenly. “I was sitting on it to keep till after school, and it’s melted.”
Miss Mason sat down at her desk.
“The dismissal bell will ring in a few minutes,” she observed. “As usual, we shall have no afternoon school the first day. All those I have asked to remain will stay of course. I won’t have to ask you to stay after the session,46Charles. You haven’t much choice in the matter. We’ll discuss this more fully later.”
“My, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes!” said Bobby, as he and Meg walked home. “Aren’t you hungry, Meg?”
“Starved,” agreed Meg. “What do you suppose the twins have been doing all the morning?”
As a matter of fact, the twins had been busy. The moment Bobby and Meg left they began to play school.
“I’ll be the teacher,” declared Twaddles, “and I want a lot of scholars. Get the dolls, Dot, and Philip and Annabel Lee.”
“And the crayons,” suggested Dot. “Where’ll we play?”
“In the sitting room,” decided Twaddles. “There’s more chairs.”
Dot collected Geraldine and another of her dolls, Totty-Fay, and Meg’s doll, Mary Maud, and trotted out to the garage to get Philip and the cat, Annabel Lee. When she returned with these pets, Twaddles had the chairs drawn up in two rows and the dolls already in their places.47
“You and Philip and Annabel Lee can sit up in front,” he said generously. “This piano bench is my desk. Want to come to school, Mother?”
Mother Blossom, who had stopped in to see what they were doing, shook her head.
“Haven’t time to go to school this morning,” she said. “Twaddles, if you are the schoolmaster, wouldn’t you like these old rims to play with? I always used to want to wear glasses when I played school as a little girl.”
Twaddles took the horn-rimmed spectacles joyfully. There was no glass in them, but they gave him a very learned, important look. Indeed, Philip stared at him perfectly fascinated.
“The class in reading will now recite,” announced Teacher Twaddles in his severest voice. “Come up to the platform, little girl.”
Dot obediently rose and went up to the piano bench.
“Read the first page of this,” commanded Twaddles, handing her a book. “Make a bow first.”
Dot ducked stiffly. The dolls watched her48unwinkingly and the dog and cat apparently wondered what would happen next.
“Now begin,” said Twaddles.
Neither he nor Dot could read, but they knew a number of poems by heart, and when they pretended to read they always held a book and repeated some of their favorite rhymes. So now Dot recited as much of “The Night Before Christmas” as she could remember.
“Very good,” said the teacher graciously. “Take your seat. The class in geography will please recite.”
Geraldine and Mary Maud obligingly moved forward and told the capital city of the United States, and which state was the nicest to live in and where the Atlantic Ocean was. They spoke in high, squeaky voices that made Philip prick up his ears suspiciously, but they received a “perfect” mark in the teacher’s book.
“I wish we could go to regular school,” mourned Dot suddenly. “Do you s’pose Meg and Bobby are having a good time?”
“Let’s ask Mother if we can go to meet ’em,” proposed Twaddles. “Come on.”49
Mother Blossom, when they asked her, said that school would be out in ten or fifteen minutes and that she had no objection if they wanted to walk up town and meet the others.
Twaddles and Dot put the chairs back where they belonged and carried the dolls upstairs to the bedroom Meg and Dot shared together.
“We’ll take Philip and Annabel Lee,” said Dot. “I guess Meg will be glad to see them, she’s been gone so long.”
So as Meg and Bobby turned into their street, they saw the twins coming to meet them.
“How do you like school?” shouted Twaddles. “Is it fun? Did you have to recite? Look how glad Philip is to see you.”
Indeed the dog was leaping and barking about Meg as though she had been gone all summer instead of one morning.
“My goodness, what did you lug that cat for?” demanded Bobby, big-brother fashion. “You’ve torn some of the gathers in your dress, too, Dot.”
“Don’t care,” said Dot, giving Annabel Lee over to Meg with a sigh of relief, for the cat was50heavy. “I caught it on a nail coming down the steps. Twaddles and I played school.”
“I led the line, going in to assembly,” reported Meg importantly. “Where’s Mother? I want to tell her.”
They had reached the house by this time, and the little Blossoms dashed up the stairs to find their mother and tell her all the news. The twins listened eagerly, for the slightest word about school never failed to enthrall them.
“So I think Tim Roon is hateful,” concluded Bobby, when he had finished telling Mother Blossom about the unfortunate snake. “And Charlie Black is just like him.”
“Now, children,” said Mother Blossom firmly, “you needn’t tell me any child is hateful, I don’t care who he is or what he does. You may think this Tim Roon hasn’t a single pleasant trait, but that doesn’t prove that he has none, only that you are not able to find it. Don’t let’s have talk like this. If you find your other classmates friendly and pleasant, think as little about the disagreeable ones as you can. There’s the lunch gong.”51
After the meal the four children went out to the garage to find out what Sam Layton was going to do that afternoon, because he often had interesting plans.
“Thought you had to go to school,” Sam greeted Meg and Bobby. “Aren’t in the kindergarten, are you?”
“You know we’re not,” answered Bobby indignantly. “First day they always have one session, so’s the teachers can get their records fixed up. Are you going to take the car out, Sam?”
“Well, yes,” admitted Sam. “I’ve got orders to meet your father at the foundry at two o’clock.”
“Take us?” begged Meg. “Daddy won’t care. Dot, you run and ask Mother.”
“Can’t take you,” Sam informed her regretfully. “Your father’s going on to Clayton for a meeting. Maybe we won’t get back till eight or nine o’clock to-night.”
Meg thought this over.
“Take us as far as the foundry,” she suggested. “We can walk home.”52
“Yes, and maybe I’ll find some specimens,” said Bobby. “I’ll go and get my bag and hammer.”
Bobby meant the little hammer he used to crack stones with and the bag he kept to put the cracked bits in. Bobby was very much interested in pebbles and stones. He thought some day he might succeed in finding a valuable piece of mineral.
“You ask your mother if it’s all right,” insisted Sam, beginning to brush his suit and getting out his cap and gloves from the wall closet. “You’re going to be on hand, Dot, aren’t you?”
Dot had already climbed into the car and was sitting on the front seat smiling serenely at the others. She looked very pretty in a fresh pink frock that had replaced the torn dress before lunch, and her cheeks were pink, too.
“Mother says all right, but we mustn’t go a bit further than the foundry,” reported Bobby, coming back in a few minutes with his precious hammer and little white canvas bag. “Let me drive, Sam?”
“I should say not,” responded Sam promptly.53“I’ll teach you to drive, Bobby, the day you’re old enough to run a car and not one minute before. In with you now, Meg?”
Meg shook her head. It was impossible to induce her to get in the car and be comfortable while Sam was backing it down the long driveway into the street. The other children never thought anything about it, but Meg was always afraid that the car would tip over, and no amount of persuasion or reasoning could change her.
She ran down to the curb now, and waited till the car rolled out. Sam stopped and she jumped in. Sam was very fond of Meg and never made fun of her, as the twins often did, because she was afraid to trust him to get out of the driveway safely.
“It’s a fine day for a drive,” commented Sam, as the car moved off smoothly. “Mercy on us, what’s that under the seat?”
54CHAPTER VIAN UNPLEASANT MEETING
It proved to be Philip under the seat, and he rolled his eyes beseechingly at Sam as Bobby pulled him out by his collar.
“Which one of you kids hid him under the seat?” demanded Sam sternly.
“I didn’t, honestly, Sam,” said Meg.
Bobby and the twins denied that they had had anything to do with Philip and his appearance.
“I did see him under the seat asleep this morning when we were out in the garage,” admitted Twaddles. “I guess he didn’t wake up till now.”
“Well, he’ll have to walk back with you, that’s all,” grumbled Sam. “Your father doesn’t want a dog around when he’s thinking about business. What is it, Bobby?”
“There’s a queer looking stone,” said Bobby, who had been pulling at Sam’s sleeve to attract his attention. “See it down there? Slow up,55and you will. There! Let me get out and get it for my collection?”
Sam slowed down the car, and looked with interest at the spot to which Bobby pointed. Then he laughed.
“That’s a lump of coal,” he announced. “Fell off a heavy load, I guess, on its way to the foundry. Collecting stones, are you, Bobby?”
“Not exactly,” said Bobby. “You see I heard about a boy who went around cracking pebbles and stones and sometimes he found very valuable ones. Maybe I will, too. Anyway I like to crack ’em.”
“I see,” said Sam, looking at his watch. “Well, we’ll have to hustle a little to make it by two o’clock. Hold your hats, youngsters.”
Sam delighted to let the car out occasionally, and for the next few minutes they whirled steadily through a cloud of dust. Then the iron gates of the foundry, of which Father Blossom was the owner and where he had his office, loomed up ahead of them, and Sam put on the brakes.
“Coming right away,” called Father Blossom, as the car rolled past the office window, where56he was working at a roll-top desk, and stopped before the door.
In just a moment he came out, buckling his brief case as he came down the steps.
“They wanted to come,” said Sam apologetically, indicating his passengers. “I told ’em they’d have to walk home, because you were going over to Clayton.”
“Yes, can’t have you along this trip,” declared Father Blossom regretfully. “Where are you going, Sam?”
Sam was driving further into the foundry yard. He turned with a half-sheepish grin to answer his employer.
“Going to drive in around the pump and make a turn,” he said. “Meg doesn’t like to be in the car when it’s backing, so I thought I wouldn’t worry her.”
So Sam drove carefully around the piles of iron and scraps and, making a wide detour at the pump, drove out of the yard again. Meg smiled her thanks. She wished she didn’t feel that a car was likely to tip over when it was57backed, but she was sure she couldn’t help that feeling.
“Now I s’pose we’ll have to get out,” murmured Bobby, as they came to the sign-post with a finger pointing to “Oak Hill, 2 miles,” in one direction, and another finger reading, “Clayton, 8 miles,” pointing another way.
“Yes, and don’t loiter,” directed Father Blossom. “Go straight home and tell Mother if I can I’ll be back for supper, but not to wait for me.”
Philip was glad to be out of the car, and he frisked ahead, barking and trying to tempt some one to run a race with him.
“This looks valuable,” said Bobby, picking up a pebble he found at one side of the road. “Wait a minute, Meg, till I see.”
The twins watched with interest while Bobby smashed the pebble with his hammer.
“Is it valuable?” demanded Twaddles.
Bobby brushed away the dust and gathered up the fragments. It was a white pebble, and the broken bits were white, faintly veined with yellow.58
“I shouldn’t wonder if it’s very rare,” hazarded the collector. “Anyway, I’m going to take it and keep it.”
He scooped the pieces into his bag, and then the four trotted briskly along toward home.
“Well, goodness, this is luck!” cried a hearty voice, and an automobile that had come up behind them stopped. It was the Oak Hill grocery-store car, and kind, stout Mr. Hambert, one of the clerks, was out making deliveries.
“I’m going over to Riceville,” he said, leaning out to talk to the children. “Don’t you want to go along? Room for everybody, and I’ll have you home by supper time.”
“Oh, Meg, let’s,” teased Dot, who dearly loved to go anywhere. “Mother won’t care. Come on.”
“I have to practice,” said Meg soberly. “But the rest of you can go. I’ll tell Mother so she won’t worry.”
“I’ll go with you,” declared Bobby. “It’s my turn to fix up the rabbit pen. Twaddles didn’t half do it last week.”
“Did too,” retorted Twaddles, already scrambling59into the seat beside Mr. Hambert. “Guess I keep those rabbits as good as you do, Bobby. You’re always fussing.”
Mr. Hambert held out a hand to Dot and pulled her into place beside him.
“All right,” he nodded kindly to Meg and Bobby. “You won’t be sorry if you do the work first and play afterward. Tell your mother I’ll see these youngsters safe home by half-past five.”
“Do you suppose Dot looked clean enough to go to Riceville?” worried Meg, after the fashion of older sisters, as the grocery car shot up the road and took the turn to the right. “Like as not they’ll go to the hotel and all the boarders will see her.”
“She’s all right,” said Bobby carelessly, “Here’s the spring lot, Meg. See how muddy the path is.”
The children had been following a narrow path that ran through the grass at the side of the road and which would presently meet the concrete walk that marked the beginning of the town. The “spring lot” was a marshy piece of land that was full of springs which fed and kept60puddles of mud moist through the dryest season. To-day, although everywhere else the dust was fine and white, the path along the spring lot was oozy and soft.
“Who’s coming?” said Meg, looking up the road suddenly. “Look, Bobby, isn’t that Tim Roon?”
Bobby glanced up from his favorite occupation of cracking stones.
“Yes, it is,” he replied. “Wonder where he’s going?”
His hands in his pockets, his cap on the back of his head, Tim Roon came toward them, whistling loudly. When he was near enough to see the two children, he stopped.
“Hello, smarties!” was his greeting. “How’s teacher’s pet?”
“I’m not teacher’s pet,” retorted Bobby indignantly.
“Nobody said you were,” answered Tim Roon. “Can’t a person speak to your sister, without you taking it all on yourself?”
Bobby flushed angrily.
“You needn’t speak to my sister unless you61can talk right,” he said rapidly. “Come on, Meg, call Philip, and we’ll go.”
The dog was hunting in the marsh and came bounding out at Meg’s first call.
“Just a mutt.” Tim Roon summed up poor Philip disagreeably. “You ought to see the dog my father’s got. What’s your hurry, anyway? You can’t go till I’m ready to let you.”
He stood directly in the path, on the only dry spot. If Meg or Bobby tried to go around him, they must step into thick, black mud.
“Teacher’s pet!” mocked Tim Roon, pointing a dirty forefinger at Meg. “She didn’t know she had to tell she whispered! But I notice you could laugh at Charlie Black when he sat on the candy.”
Meg did not see what that had to do with her whispering, and perhaps Tim Roon couldn’t have told either. He was merely doing his best to be unkind and unpleasant, and succeeding as well as such ill-natured folk usually do.
“You get out of the way, Tim Roon!” cried Bobby. “Go ahead, Meg, I’ll punch him if he touches you.”62
Tim was older and larger than Bobby, but the latter had no intention of allowing him to annoy his sister.
Meg tried to push her way past the short, sturdy body of Tim, who blocked her path. A quick twist of a vicious, sharp, little elbow jostled her into the mud, and she stepped in over one of her low shoes.
“You will, will you,” snarled Bobby, angrier than he had ever been in his life. “You just wait––knocking a girl like that!”
Tim squared off, as he had seen fighters in pictures do, and Bobby lowered his head for a rush. But Philip, who had been an interested spectator, decided that the time had come for him to be of use. With a sharp bark, he lunged straight for Tim’s legs, his sharp, even teeth showing on either side of his red tongue. Tim saw him coming, jumped to avoid him, lost his footing, and slipped. He fell into the thickest part of the mud, his foot doubled under him.
“Run, Meg!” shouted Bobby, who wisely decided that it was the better part of valor to take63advantage of Tim’s plight. “Come, Philip, run! run!”
Pell-mell, the stones clattering in the bag Bobby still clutched, Philip racing ahead and barking like a mad dog, the two children ran down the road and did not stop till they reached the broad band of cement walk where the east boundaries of Oak Hill were drawn.
Then they stopped and looked back, Philip panting and growling a little as if he only wanted a word to go back and repeat his good work.
64CHAPTER VIIA HARD LESSON
“My, I’ll bet he’s mad!” said Bobby. Tim was standing in the mud, trying to scrape some of it off his clothes. His cap was gone and great patches of mud clung to his face and hair. He was a distressed looking object indeed. While they watched, he glanced up and saw them standing there. He shook a fist at Bobby, and began to limp slowly off down the road.
“Do you suppose he is hurt?” asked Meg anxiously. “Maybe he ought to go to see Doctor Maynard.”
“He isn’t hurt,” Bobby assured her confidently. “That mud is as soft as––as anything! Wasn’t Philip fine to think of scaring him like that?”
Indeed, Philip had an extra good supper that night, after Bobby and Meg had told Mother and Norah all about the help he had given them, and the twins, when they came in from their65drive, were filled with admiration for such an intelligent dog.
“My practicing’s all done,” announced Meg happily. “I don’t mind it so much now, ’cause I want to be ready to play assembly marches when I’m in the third grade.”
“If you want to see how rabbit pens ought to look,” Bobby told Twaddles confidentially, “just go out and see those I fixed this afternoon.”
“Huh,” sniffed Twaddles with withering indifference, “I guess the rabbits don’t know they’re any better off!”
The first week of school went very smoothly, and both Bobby and Meg began to look forward to their reports at the end of the month. These reports were immensely important, according to Bobby, who was, of course, experienced in such matters.
“If Bert Figger gets eight in spelling, his father’s going to give him fifty cents,” Bobby told Meg.
“You’ll get nine in ’rithmetic, I know you will,” said Meg admiringly. “You’re awfully good in that, Bobby.”66
“Yes, I think I am,” agreed Bobby. “I haven’t missed one so far. Every answer I’ve worked out has been right.”
He repeated this assertion at the supper table that night, and Father Blossom shook his head.
“Don’t be too sure of that nine,” he said warningly. “The work is going to get harder the further you go, you know. Trying for a nine is all right, but I don’t like to hear you speak as though you didn’t have to make any effort to reach it.”
The next morning in school Miss Mason had something interesting to show her first grade pupils. It was a very beautifully illustrated book of verses for children. The poems were written by famous poets, and each poet had signed his name to his own verse. The pictures were in colors and had been painted by well-known artists, who had signed their work with a pen after the pictures had been printed. So it was really a picture book, a poem book, and an autograph album all in one.
“There are only three like it in the world,” explained Miss Mason. “They were raffled off67at a fair for a children’s hospital, and a friend of mine, one of the artists, won a copy. She sent it to me.”
Miss Mason said the second grade might examine the book at recess or at noon, because they had been busy with their writing lesson while she was showing it to the younger children. Then, while the first grade was set to work to make a page of “S’s,” Miss Mason called the second grade to order for their arithmetic lesson.
“You will not need pencils and paper this morning,” she announced. “We are going to have a little mental arithmetic.”
Charlie Black groaned.
“That will do,” said the teacher sharply. “Tim Roon, are you chewing gum again? Come and put it in the waste basket.”
Tim gulped hastily.
“I’ve swallowed it,” he declared.
Miss Mason frowned.
“I hope that some day you will do as I tell you,” she said impatiently. “Now ready. Robert Blossom, if I go down to Mr. Dryburg’s shop68and buy two yards of percale at sixteen cents a yard, how much must I pay?”
Bobby hastily counted on his fingers.
“Thirty-two cents,” he answered.
“Stand up straight,” commanded Miss Mason. “And if I buy three yards of braid at ten cents a yard, how much will that be?”
Meg looked up from her writing lesson to watch Bobby’s hands, though she knew that if Miss Mason saw her she would be scolded severely. He held them behind him and his fingers fairly galloped as he used them for an adding machine.
“Thirty cents for braid,” stammered Bobby.
“And if I give Mr. Dryburg a dollar bill, how much change shall I have?” asked Miss Mason, switching from multiplication to subtraction so quickly that the startled Bobby lost his count.
“Well?” urged the teacher. “What are you doing with your hands, Robert? Bring them out where I can see them. Now then, how much change is coming to me?”
Bobby was hopelessly bewildered now, and he had forgotten the cost of both percale and braid.69He managed to stutter, “I––I––don’t know,” and sat down thankfully.
Tim Roon scraped his feet noisily, intending to annoy Bobby, but unfortunately he drew the attention of Miss Mason to himself.
“Stand up, Tim,” she commanded sharply. “How much change should I have from that dollar bill?”
“Don’t know,” muttered Tim.
“How much did the braid cost?” demanded Miss Mason.
“I’ve forgotten,” said Tim.
“You mean you didn’t listen,” retorted Miss Mason. “Sit down. If this class can’t do any better with a simple test like this, I’m afraid you’ll make a poor showing with your cards this month. Marion Green, perhaps you can tell me how much change I should have?”
Marion Green was a little girl ordinarily very good in arithmetic. But she was frightened now and plainly showed it. She wouldn’t even get out of her seat and try to answer.
Palmer Davis was no better, and Hester Scott frankly burst into tears when called upon. By70this time most of the class had forgotten what the problem was, but Miss Mason refused to repeat it. She said they should be able to remember it.
“Well, Bertrand?” Miss Mason spoke to Bertrand Ashe, a rather dull boy, and one who habitually made mistakes when sent to the blackboard to work out examples.
Bertrand stood up, his sleepy eyes fixed earnestly on his teacher.
“The percale and the braid came to sixty-two cents altogether,” he announced, “so if you gave Mr. Dryburg a dollar, you would have thirty-eight cents in change.”
Bertrand sat down.
“Right,” said Miss Mason. “I’m glad I have one pupil who knows how to use his brain. Some of those who might have had eight on their cards this month needn’t be surprised to find a six. Robert, how much is seven times six?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Bobby ungraciously.
He did know, but he was miffed to think he had missed a problem that Bertrand Ashe had been able to solve.71
“That isn’t the kind of spirit to show,” said Miss Mason sharply. “Instead of being resentful, you should resolve to keep your head next time. Nothing in the world but panic made you miss that question, Robert. Now go to the board and take the example I read you.”
Bobby sat still, his feet locked rebelliously in the iron framework of his desk.
Miss Mason took no notice of him for a moment, sending several others to the board, among them Tim Roon and Charlie Black. Then she came down the aisle to Bobby’s desk, a piece of chalk in her hand.
“Go to the board, Robert,” she said quietly, putting the chalk into his unwilling fingers and closing them around it with a warm friendly pressure of her own strong, slim fingers.
Bobby was suddenly ready to go, though not ready yet to show that he was ashamed of the way he had acted. Miss Mason read aloud the problem, and those at the board began their figuring.
“Margaret!” Miss Mason spoke so suddenly72that Meg jumped. “Are you interested in this lesson? Have you finished your page?”
Meg blushed brightly and bent over her copy book. She had made only seven letters, but then she had been anxious lest Bobby get one of his “stubborn fits,” as Norah called them, when no one but Father Blossom could persuade him to change his mind.
“I think Miss Mason is as mean as can be!” thought Meg to herself, carefully tracing the outline of a graceful “S.” “She says cross things all the time. I wonder is she old?”
Old people had a right to be cross, Meg considered. Miss Mason didn’t look old––she had hair as yellow as Meg’s own, and big brown eyes. And she wore pretty dresses. Meg was so interested in studying Miss Mason that the recess bell rang before she had finished her copy-book page.
73CHAPTER VIIITHE SPOILED BOOK
The children put their books away thankfully and trooped out into the yard. Miss Mason, after putting up every window, as was her custom, went across the hall to the teachers’ room.
Tim Roon was so busy dusting off the top of his desk and fastening down his papers so that the wind would not blow them away that he was the last pupil left in the room when Miss Mason went out, closing the door behind her. Tim waited till he was sure she was not coming back, then tiptoed hastily up to her desk.
“I’ll show her!” he muttered, tumbling books and papers about till he found what he wanted.
It was the illustrated and autographed book of verses. And now if any one had been there to see Tim they would have been astonished at what he did next. Reaching down into a kind of cabinet that formed the lower part of Miss Mason’s desk, Tim brought up a tall bottle of74ink from which the desk inkwells were filled. He took the stopper out and opened the book.
“What you doing?” asked a voice at his elbow.
Tim’s conscience was guilty enough, dear knows, so it was no wonder that he jumped. A thick stream of ink spurted out and ran down the crevice of the binding of the book. Tim closed it quickly.
“Gee, Charlie Black! you scared me,” Tim said, relieved to find that the voice belonged to his chum. “What am I doing? You just watch me!”
Tim opened the book again and poured out more ink. Then he closed it and pressed down hard on the covers. He did this several times, each inking making an ugly, blurry figure that completely ruined two or three pages of the book.
“What’s that for?” demanded Charlie.
“Think I’m going to be nagged every day in the week and never do a thing about it?” growled Tim. “Maybe when she finds her precious book marked up she’ll begin to understand that there’s some one who won’t stand for everything.”75
“How’s she going to know you did it?” asked Charlie Black, watching the ink seep into a fine illustration as Tim slowly poured more out.
“She won’t know if I can help it,” grinned that bad boy. “And if I catch you opening your mouth–––”
“I won’t,” promised Charlie hastily. “Honest, I won’t say a word, Tim.”
“You’d better not,” warned Tim darkly. “Let me ever find out you as much as whispered you saw me and I’ll, I’ll––I don’t know what I won’t do to you!”
This vague threat was sufficiently terrifying to insure obedience from Charlie, who knew from experience that Tim could be both relentless and cruel. There was little danger that he would ever betray his chum.
“Now I guess that’s finished,” announced Tim with satisfaction, closing the once lovely book. “Don’t look at me when she takes it out after recess to show the class. Wait till I put back these papers where they were. There now, let’s go downstairs and come up with the others when the bell rings.”76
When the bell rang and the children came upstairs, they found a member of the school committee sitting on the platform beside Miss Mason’s desk, and the teacher announced that they would have a reading lesson for the first and second grades in place of the usual work.
“I will show you the book I promised to let the second grade see, directly after the noon period,” said Miss Mason. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here this recess, but we had an important conference. Now, Margaret, you may read the first paragraph of the third lesson.”
Rufus Hornbeck was the name of the committeeman, and all the children who had been to school before knew him as the head of the school committee and a man who could, if he wished, scold even Mr. Carter, the primary and grammar school principal. Some of the boys said that “old Hornbeck,” as they disrespectfully called him, had the right to tell Mr. Fredericks, the high-school principal, what to do. But the high-school was too far away for the majority of the boys to think about.
“Come up here on the platform, and face the77class,” said Mr. Hornbeck to Meg. “Read clearly now, and let your classmates enjoy the story.”
Poor Meg was very shy as she went up to the platform, for reading aloud was an ordeal for her, though at home she always had her “nose in a book,” as Norah said. She reached the platform, grasped her reading book tightly in both hands, and began to read hurriedly.
“That’s enough,” announced Miss Mason, as Meg came to the end of a long paragraph.
Meg closed her book, stepped to one side to avoid the waste basket, and put her foot squarely into Mr. Hornbeck’s high silk hat which he had placed carefully on the floor beside his chair.
“Tut! tut!” said Mr. Hornbeck reprovingly. “Don’t be so clumsy, child. Don’t kick––lift your foot out.”
Meg was crimson with embarrassment, and the class was snickering in spite of Miss Mason’s frown. Meg was glad to escape to her seat, and the committeeman moved his hat further back before the next unlucky reader came to the platform.78
It did seem as though the noon bell would never ring, but at quarter of twelve it did, and Meg and Bobby hurried home to lunch.
“What did you do all morning?” asked Meg of the twins, who as usual were waiting for them at the gate.
“Played school,” answered Dot.
That was the usual answer. The twins never tired of playing school, and whatever Meg and Bobby told them one day they were pretty sure to “pretend” the next. Always and always, too, they wished that they might go to “regular” school.
That afternoon, as soon as she had given the first grade pupils seat work to keep them busy, Miss Mason remembered her promise to show the higher class her book. Tim Roon, who had been secretly relieved that Mr. Hornbeck’s visit had delayed the discovery of his trick, now began to be uneasy. He flashed a warning look at Charlie Black as Miss Mason fumbled with the papers that covered the book.
“I’ll pass it down the aisle,” said Miss Mason,79drawing out the book. “Now, Ellen, this first picture was drawn by an artist named–––”
Ellen Glover looked up startled. Miss Mason’s voice had stopped so suddenly when she opened her book that the effect was as if some one had closed a door sharply while some one else was speaking.
“Her face was just as white,” Meg afterward told her mother, “and then it got red and her eyes snapped like––like anything!”
Indeed Miss Mason’s eyes were snapping fire. Tim Roon for the first time in his life was actually afraid of his teacher.
“Some vandal has destroyed this beautiful book,” said Miss Mason, speaking coldly and slowly. “It was almost priceless. I want each one of you to come up to the desk and see how it has been ruined. First grade, put away your work.”
A sudden shiver of excitement went over the room. No one had ever seen Miss Mason so angry before. And yet she was very quiet and still about it. Aisle by aisle, she made them come up and look at the book, insisting that each80child take it in his hands and examine the spots of ink. When the last pupil had returned to his seat she spoke again.
“This was done during recess,” she said. “I did not leave the room this noon. If any one in this class was in the room at recess this morning, raise his hand.”
Not one hand went up.
Miss Mason sighed impatiently.
“I see you are determined to make it hard for me,” she commented. “Very well, if we do no work this afternoon, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Then beginning with the girls, she asked each one if she had been in the room during recess time. As it happened not a girl had entered the room between the bells. An interesting game of tag had taken the attention of both grades in the girls’ half of the school yard.
Then Miss Mason began with the boys. Each one denied that he had been in the room till she reached Bobby.
“Yes, I was up here,” he admitted.81
“Why didn’t you raise your hand?” snapped Miss Mason. “What were you doing?”
“I came up to get my ball. I had left it in my desk,” answered Bobby.
Unfortunately for him, he looked confused and cross, and Miss Mason had some grounds for thinking he might know more than he cared to tell.
“When were you up here?” she persisted.
Tim Roon listened eagerly for Bobby’s reply. He was beginning to wonder if he had been seen leaving the room.
“About three minutes before the bell rang,” said Bobby defiantly.
“Don’t speak to me like that,” commanded Miss Mason. “Do you know how the ink got on this book, Robert?”
Bobby was silent. Meg looked worried.
“Robert, do you hear me? I am asking you if you know how this book was defaced?”
Bobby’s blue eyes shot out a few sparks equal to those in Miss Mason’s eyes.
“You know I don’t!” he retorted, not at all respectfully.82
Bobby had been taught to love books at home and to handle them carefully. He was hurt and astonished that any one should think he would deliberately ruin a beautiful book, and he forgot that Miss Mason couldn’t know him as well as Father and Mother Blossom did. They would never suspect him of harming a book.
“If this is your idea of getting even for the arithmetic lesson this morning, all I can say is that you’ve chosen a very underhanded method,” declared Miss Mason, evidently determined to believe the worst.
“I never touched the book,” insisted Bobby hotly.
83CHAPTER IXBOBBY IN TROUBLE
Miss Mason glanced at him oddly.
“That will do,” she said.
Then she proceeded to question the other boys. Palmer Davis admitted that he had been in the room during recess, to get a pencil, he said. And Henry Graham, a boy in the first grade, whispered shakily that he had come back for an apple he had left in his desk. Miss Mason was cross-examining Wilbert Peters, another boy, when the door was suddenly pushed open and an odd procession entered.
“Well, for pity’s sake!” ejaculated Meg aloud, then slapped a hasty hand to her mouth.
Philip, his tail wagging ingratiatingly, came first, carrying Totty-Fay in his mouth. Back of him marched the twins, Twaddles’ face shining with soap and water he had evidently applied himself, for it had dried in streaks, and Dot in a frock so stiffly starched that each separate ruffle stood out around her like a small platform.84
“Hello!” grinned Twaddles, embarrassed now that he found so many eyes fixed on him.
Miss Mason looked surprised.
Philip marched up to the platform and put down the doll. Then he sat down, panting, his tail wagging furiously.
“We––we want to go to school, too,” explained Dot, speaking to Miss Mason, “so we came.”
“I see,” admitted the teacher. “You’re not old enough to come to school yet. Whose children are you?”
“Please, Miss Mason,” Meg stood up bravely, “they’re my brother and sister, Twaddles and Dot.”
“Dorothy, I suppose,” amended Miss Mason, who could never bear to use a nickname, no matter how pretty. “But where on earth did a child get the name of Twaddles?”
“His right name is Arthur Gifford Blossom,” explained Meg timidly.
The twins were sitting down comfortably on the edge of the platform and studying the room with interest.
“Well, Margaret, I think you will have to85take them home,” said Miss Mason, not unkindly. “It lacks only fifteen minutes of dismissal time, anyway. I shall let the girls go at half-past three, but the boys will have to remain till we get this matter of the defaced book straightened out. Go and get your hat and coat, Margaret.”
Meg went to the cloak room for her hat and coat and came back to find Miss Mason saying good-by to the twins.
“And when you are six years old we’ll be very glad to have you come to school,” she told them. “Don’t forget the doll––all right, now you’re ready.”
She held open the door for Philip, and even patted him on the head as he trotted through. The irrepressible twins, who had enjoyed their visit and were sorry to have it over so soon, turned as they were following Meg out of the room.
“Good-by, Bobby,” they chorused.
Poor Bobby blushed violently, and the other children laughed.
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Meg reproved86them as she piloted them down the hall. “You can’t holler out loud in school.”
“Isn’t it nice?” said Dot admiringly. “Oh, Meg, what’s this room?”
She had darted to the open door of the assembly hall and was peering in at the rows and rows of empty seats.
“Come on,” urged Meg. “Don’t snoop around like that, Dot. I’ll bet Bobby is mad ’cause you made everybody laugh at him.”
“’Twon’t hurt him,” declared Twaddles impishly. “Who’s that man in there, Meg?”
Meg glanced hurriedly into the office they were passing. The door was partly closed, but she could see a man speaking to Miss Wright.
“That’s the principal, Mr. Carter,” whispered Meg, her teeth almost chattering with fright. “I hope Miss Mason doesn’t tell him about her book.”
Miss Wright had heard the whispering and came to the door.
“Why, Meg,” she said pleasantly, “aren’t you going home early? And are these new scholars?”
“It’s the twins,” stammered Meg desperately.87“They would come, and Miss Mason says I must take them home.”
Mr. Carter, who had come up behind Miss Wright, laughed. He had clear, kind eyes behind his glasses, and he was much younger than Meg had supposed him to be. The other children had talked to her so much of how terrible the principal was when he had a bad boy before him that she had really pictured an ogre, with gray hair and a terrible hooked nose and a loud, fierce voice.
“I’ve heard of children having to be driven to school,” said Mr. Carter, still smiling, “but this is the first time I ever knew that they had to be taken home to prevent them from learning. Never mind, youngsters, your school days are coming. And when you do come to Oak Hill School, you come and see me the very first day.”
The twins were too shy to do more than nod, and Meg hurried them out of the building, Philip having already pushed the door open and gone, before they should attract any more attention.
“What ever put it into your head to come?”88she scolded, leading the way toward home. “Does Mother know it?”
For the first time Twaddles appeared to be somewhat confused.
“She doesn’t know it exactly,” he admitted. “We just said we were going out.”
And indeed Mother Blossom was very much surprised when Meg walked into the sitting room followed by the twins.
“Where is Bobby?” asked Mother Blossom, looking up from her sewing. “And you are early, dear. Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing much,” said Meg, with a severe glance at the culprits, “’cept the children came to school and brought the dog and Totty-Fay, and Bobby has to stay in because Miss Mason says he spilt ink all over her book.”
Of course there was an exciting half-hour after that, with the twins trying to show their side of the case and Mother Blossom half laughing and half scolding over their performance. Meg had also to tell everything that had happened in connection with the book, and Mother89Blossom and the twins were all sure that Bobby had had absolutely nothing to do with it.
“Course he didn’t!” said Meg vehemently. “I know he was mad about missing the arithmetic lesson, but he wouldn’t go and spatter ink on a book. And it was such a lovely book, Mother.”
They were still talking when Bobby came in, looking hot and tired and very cross.
“How long did she keep you in?” asked Meg, as he flung his cap into the corner.
“An hour,” returned Bobby. “She let all the boys go but six of us at four o’clock, and she says one of us six must have done it. And they all say it’s me. But I didn’t do it.”
He was looking at Mother Blossom, and she smiled back at him, her own, sunny, cheerful smile.
“We know you didn’t, dear,” she declared proudly.
“She sent you a note, Mother,” said Bobby, fishing around in his pocket and bringing out a crumpled, rather soiled little envelope. “My,90I was mad! She doesn’t believe a word I say. I wish I had spoiled her old book!”
“Hasn’t it been the meanest day!” sighed Meg. “I hate school!”
Mother Blossom folded the note she had been reading.
“Dot and Twaddles, Sam is just backing out the car to go after Daddy,” she said to the twins. “Run along, and you may go with him.”
The twins scampered off, and then she turned to Meg and Bobby.
“Miss Mason evidently thinks you destroyed the book, Bobby,” sighed Mother Blossom, “but as it can not be positively proved, you are to go to school as usual. I am sorrier than words can tell you that this has happened. But, dearie, I’m afraid you are a bit to blame.”
“Me?” cried the astonished Bobby. “Why, Mother!”
“Well, think how you acted over the arithmetic lesson,” Mother Blossom reminded him. “You know Daddy and I have talked to you about this before, Bobby. You are not a very good loser, and the boy who can’t lose and keep91his temper will never be a good sportsman. Suppose Daddy got mad and ‘talked back’ whenever things didn’t go to suit him at the foundry!”
Mother Blossom put an arm around Bobby and drew him closer to her.
“And if you had spoken to Daddy or to me as you did to Miss Mason,” she went on, smoothing back his hair, “I think you know what you would be asked to do––what you would want to do, in fact. Don’t you?”
“’Pologize,” muttered Bobby shamefacedly.
“Yes,” said Mother Blossom. “And I want you to apologize to Miss Mason for being discourteous. Never mind if she does think you spoiled the book. As long as you know and we know you didn’t, that really doesn’t matter very much; and you’ll feel so much better if you do what is right. The boy who did ruin the book will be found out some day. Such things always come to light.”