CHAPTER XVII
IN SCHOOL
Oh, such fun as we had in school that time when Mr. Gorrisen was our teacher! It was a regular comedy. He was a tiny little man. Antoinette and I were taller than he, so you can judge for yourself. And I never in my life saw any one with such round eyes as he had.
You should just have seen those eyes when we were having a little fun at our desks. With a hard, fixed stare, not letting his gaze wander for an instant, his eyes bored themselves right into the culprit.
Down from the platform he came, with slow, measured step across the floor,—his eyes not moving for a second,—came nearer and nearer and nearer; ugh! then his finger tips grabbed the very tip-end of your ear and there they held tight like a vise. No one can have the faintest idea how painful it was. And all without one word; not a syllable came over Mr. Gorrisen's lips.
I wonder, I really do, that there is anything left of the tips of my ears since then, considering the many times Mr. Gorrisen took hold of them!
And he was mighty quick about giving us poor marks! If I didn't know every single thing in the lesson by heart, so that I could rattle it off, I got a "4" immediately.
It was at that time, however, that I hit upon the plan of cutting out the bad marks from my report book, for a "4" or "5" looks perfectly disgusting in a report. But an innocent little square hole,—that's no harm, as it were.
"But, Inger Johanne," said Father, "what is that?"
"Oh, well, Father, there was a bad mark there," I answered. "And I didn't dare come home with such a mark, so I just cut it out."
The first time I did it, Father wasn't so very angry; but when I did it again and again, he was furious. So I had to give it up. Then when I really came to think about it, I saw it was wrong, so I would not do it any more, anyway.
Once we had Mr. Gorrisen on Examination Day. Mrs. White, with her light kid gloves on, sat in a chair on the platform and listened, holding Karen's dirty German reading-book by the tip edge. She looked continually at the book but she didn't understand a word,—I'll wager anything you like she didn't,—for she never turned over the page when she should have. I saw that plainly. On a seat near the door sat Madam Tellefsen, who had come to listen to Mina; she did not put on any airs, though. She never once pretended to understand German, but laid the book down beside her on the seat and sat there sweltering in her French shawl and looking rather helpless.
Enough of that. I was just carving my name on my desk-lid—very deep and nice it was to be—when all at once I noticed that Mr. Gorrisen was looking at me. He stared as if he were staring right through me, stared steadily as he came across the room.
Oh, my unlucky ear-tip! His fingers held it as tight as a vise. Up I must get from my seat and across the floor was I led by the ear to the corner of the room. There he let go of me.
Well! Imagine that! A pretty sight I made standing in the corner on Examination Day! If only Mrs. White and Madam Tellefsen had not been sitting there! They would surely go and tattle about it all over town.
Truly I would not stand there any longer. Mr. Gorrisen was reading a piece aloud just then, so all at once I lay flat down on the floor and crept over to the desks. Once I had got under the desks, it was easy enough. Kima Pirk gave me a horrid kick in the back, and Karen whacked my head when I was directly under her desk, but that was only because I pinched them as I passed. I could hear them all whispering and whispering above me—it was great fun—and I crept farther and farther. I thought I would go to the last desk, you see. There, now I had reached it. I got up and settled myself in the seat, wearing a most innocent expression.
I looked at Mrs. White. Her face seemed to get sharper and narrower just from severity; but Madam Tellefsen laughed so that she had to hold the end of her French shawl over her face. I had got very warm and my hair was very dusty from that expedition under the desks, but I didn't mind that.
Fully five minutes passed before Mr. Gorrisen saw me. But all at once when I had begun to feel pretty safe, came:
"Why, Inger Johanne! Have you walked out of the corner without permission?"
"No, I have not walked, Mr. Gorrisen," said I.
"She crept," the others murmured faintly.
"She crept," said Kima aloud from her desk in the front row.
"What is this, Inger Johanne?" asked Mr. Gorrisen severely.
"It was so tedious to stand there, Mr. Gorrisen," I said.
"Yes, that was exactly why you were put there."
"And so I crept over here when you didn't see me."
Without another word, down across the floor he came. I turned my right ear towards him, for the left ear burned horribly even yet from the other time. But he evidently thought that an ear-pinch was too gentle a punishment for creeping through the whole class-room. I was taken by the arm and led along out of the door. Outside in the hall he shook me by the arm. Oh, well! it was just a little shake anyway,—but then I had to hang around in that hall until the lesson was all over.
I can't understand now how I ever dared to creep that way in Mr. Gorrisen's class. O dear! I have been awfully foolish many times—unbelievably foolish!
Then there was that day Mr. Gorrisen fell off his chair. I was put out in the hall that day, too. But all the others ought to have been sent out as well, for we all laughed together. It was just because I couldn't stop laughing that I had to go. I surely have spasms in my cheeks, for long after all the others have stopped I keep on—I can't help it.
We were having our geography lesson. Mr. Gorrisen sat in an armchair by the table and stared at us, for he was not the kind of teacher that sharpens pencils or polishes his finger nails or does anything like that. He just sits and sways back and forth in his chair and stares incessantly. Well, never mind that. The lesson was on the peninsula of Korea. I remember distinctly.
"Now, Minka, Korea lies——" He swayed and swayed in his chair.
"Korea lies—ahem! Ko-re-a lies——"
Minka glanced anxiously around to see whether any one would whisper to her—"Korea lies between——"
There came a frightful explosive bang; the chair had gone over backward, making a horrible noise, and Mr. Gorrisen's small legs were up in the air above the corner of the table.
Oh, what shrieks of laughter pealed out through the class-room! But quick as a flash Mr. Gorrisen was up again. He sat himself in the armchair as if nothing had happened, only his face was flaming red up to his hair. It was exactly as if there had been no interruption whatever, to say nothing of such a noisy comical topsy-turvy.
"Korea lies where, Minka?"
But that was more than I could bear. I burst out laughing again—he, he! ha, ha!—and all the others joined in. If he had only laughed himself, I don't believe it would have seemed so funny—but he was as solemn as an owl.
"Stop laughing instantly." He struck the table with his ruler so that the room rang. We quieted down at once except for a hiccough here and there, but the worst of it was that Mr. Gorrisen stared only at me. I fixed my eyes on an old map on the wall and thought of all the saddest things I could, but it was of no use. My laughter burst out again; I was so full of it that it just bubbled over.
Mr. Gorrisen swayed back and forth in his chair as usual as if to show how perfectly unembarrassed he was. But suddenly—true as Gospel—if he didn't almost tip over again! He clutched frantically at the table, gave a guilty glance at me. "Ha, ha! Ha, ha!" I could hear my own laughter above all the rest.
Mr. Gorrisen was up in a trice, and I was hurried out of the door so quickly that, almost before I knew it, I stood out in the cold hall. I nearly froze, it was so bitterly cold there; for it was nearly Christmas time, you see.
I opened the door a tiny bit just far enough to put my nose through the crack.
"Mr. Gorrisen."
"Well?"
"It's so cold out here. I won't laugh any more."
And so I went in again. At recess they all said they wondered how I ever dared ask Mr. Gorrisen to let me come in from the hall.
"Pooh!" said I. "I dare do anything with Mr. Gorrisen."
"Oh-h! you don't either! Far from it!"
"Well, I'd really dare pretty nearly anything. I'm not afraid of him."
"Would you dare sing right out loud in his class?" asked Karen.
"Pooh! that wouldn't be anything much to do," said Minka. Then they all began to tease me.
"Fie, for shame! She is so brave and yet she does not dare to do such a little thing as that!"
"You shall see whether I dare or not," I said. And, would you believe it? I did sing aloud one time in Mr. Gorrisen's geography class.
It was several days after he had tipped over. I had been watching my chance in all his classes, but somehow it didn't seem to come. One day, however, I was just in the humor, and in the midst of the silence, while Mr. Gorrisen sat and wrote down marks in the record book, I sang out at the top of my voice:
"'Sons of Norway, that ancient kingdom'"—
I did not once glance at Mr. Gorrisen but looked around at all the others who lay over their desks and laughed till they choked. And I sang on:
"'Manly and solemn, let the sound rise!'"
Not a sound had come from the platform till that instant. Then I heard behind me the click, click, click of Mr. Gorrisen's heels across the floor and out of the door.
"You'll catch it! oh, you'll catch it, Inger Johanne."
"Oh, I wouldn't be in your shoes for a good deal!"
"Well, it was you who teased me to do it," I said.
"Yes, but to think that you should be so stupid as to do such a thing."
I did really get a little scared, especially because it was so long before Mr. Gorrisen came back.
"Run away!" said one.
"Hide under your desk," said another.
But there he was in the doorway and the Principal with him.
"What is all this, Inger Johanne?" said the Principal. "You are too big to be so wild now. You are not such a bad girl, but you are altogether too thoughtless and use no judgment."
"Yes," I said. I was so glad the Principal didn't scold any harder.
"Of course you will be marked for this in your report-book; and remember this," the Principal shook his finger at me threateningly, "it won't do for you to behave like this many times, Inger Johanne. You won't get off so easily again." But as he went out of the door I saw that he smiled. Yes, he did, really.
But Mother didn't smile when she saw the marks.
"Are you going to bring sorrow to your father and mother?" she said. And those beautiful brown eyes of hers looked sad and troubled.
Just think! It had never occurred to me that it would be a sorrow to Father and Mother for me to sing out loud in class. Oh, I was awfully, awfully disgusted with myself. I hung around Mother all the afternoon.
First and foremost I must beg Mr. Gorrisen's pardon, Mother said. It seemed to me I could ask the whole world's pardon if only Mother's eyes wouldn't look so sorrowful. I wanted very much to go right down to Mr. Gorrisen's lodgings; but Mother said she thought it was only right that I should beg his pardon at school, so that all the class should hear. It was embarrassing, frightfully embarrassing, to ask Mr. Gorrisen's pardon—but I did it notwithstanding. I said, "Please excuse me for singing out in class."
"H'm, h'm," said Mr. Gorrisen. "Well, go back now and take your seat."
Since then I have sat like a lamp-post in his classes—yes, I really have. Many a time I should have liked to have some fun—but then I would think of Mother's sorrowful eyes and so I have held myself in and kept from any more skylarking.