HOW PATTY CURTIS LEARNED TO SWEEP.
BY MRS. M. L. EVANS.
NOWADAYS nearly every school-room is furnished with a waste-paper basket, dust-pan and brush, with which the pupils are expected to keep the room tidy. But in the days when Patty Curtis went to school in the old brick school-house in Sagetown, such luxuries were unheard of, and the school-room during the greater part of the day was a haven for dirt—rather clean dirt it was, but it answered the definition which says, “Dirt is matter out of place.”
Certainly the school-room floor was no place for the scraps of paper over which Patty industriously scribbled with her stubby lead-pencil, but it was there she dropped them without thought of wrong-doing or idea of further responsibility for her manuscript fragments. Cores of haws and crab-apples, and shells of “pig-nuts” found the same resting place, and soiled slate-rags were in such abundance as would have delighted the heart of any “old rag man;” during flower season, too, a desk proudly adorned with fresh flowers in the morning meant a floor sadly strewed with wilted, trodden fragments in the afternoon, and over all this litter was plentifully sprinkled the dust of the earth. Of this we are all supposed to be made, and it needs but little faith to believe that children are made of it, when one sees, in a school-room, the quantity of it they can kick off their feet, and shake out of their jackets and skirts.
The services of a janitor were as unknown to the old school-house as were the basket, dust-pan and brush; the teacher was expected to do the sweeping herself. This, Miss Kelsey, Patty’s new teacher one spring term, found no pleasant ending to a hard day’s work. The desks and seats were awkwardly constructed, and placed very close together; if Miss Kelsey tried to sweep without looking under them, she found she left more dirt than she swept out, and if she thrust both head and broom under the seat, in order to see what she was doing, she was sure to bump her head, and “jab” herself with the broom-handle, and in either case she came out of the school-room tired and hot, and choked with dust.
It is not strange, then, that she had not done the sweeping many days before she came to the conclusion:
“It is the children who make all this labor necessary, and it is but right that they should do it themselves; they are little and active and could sweep under these troublesome seats more easily than I can; besides the girls will soon have such work to do at home, and their mothers will be glad to have them learn to do it here.”
So one evening when both hands on the little round clock pointed to IV., and thirty-six boys and girls were waiting the tap at the bell that should dismiss them, Miss Kelsey spoke:
“I have decided to ask you children to do the sweeping for me hereafter, and I will choose two each evening from your names, as they stand on my register, to do the work. To-night Sarah Adams and Aggie Bentley may sweep. There are two brooms, one girl can take the boys’ side and the other the girls’ side of the room, and you will soon finish the sweeping.”
For a moment each pupil eyed the dirty floor, and tried to decide whether or not sweeping was a desirable piece of work. Sarah Adams very soon decided to her satisfaction that it was not, and she raised her hand.
“Well, Sarah?” said Miss Kelsey.
“Please, Miss Kelsey, mother’s at a quiltin’ at Deacon Smith’s, and she told me to come home as soon as school was out, and help Nancy get supper for the men.”
Sarah was the oldest girl in school, and Miss Kelsey knew that in whatever she led the other children were sure to follow, but she did not want to offend Mrs. Adams by refusing to allow Sarah to go home when school was dismissed, so she reluctantly said:
“Well, then, I suppose I will have to excuse you. Hattie Bitner may take your place to-night, and you can sweep to-morrow night.”
Up went Hattie’s hand as if worked by a spring. “Miss Kelsey, mother’s making soap, and she told me to come home right away as soon as school was out to tend the baby.”
It was natural, though perhaps not wise, for Miss Kelsey to lose patience at this point.
“Then,” said she, “you may go immediately, and mind you run every step of the way. Well, Patty Curtis, what is your mother doing that you cannot stay to sweep?”
Now, Patty had been trying during all of the previous dialogue to think if there was not something that her mother might possibly want her to do after school, by which she might escape the sweeping, but all in vain, for Patty’s mother was one of the women who “never want children bothering around about the work,” and as Patty was too conscientious to invent an excuse, as some children would have done, she had no answer for Miss Kelsey’s question except a rather sulky, “Nothing that I know of, ma’am.”
“Then you and Aggie Bentley take the brooms when the others are gone,” said Miss Kelsey, as she tapped the bell.
Aggie Bentley was one of the pleasantest little girls in the world; when appointed to sweep she did not think of trying to evade the duty, it was enough for her that her teacher had asked her to do it, and she took the broom so cheerfully and went to work with such a vim that Patty was shamed out of her unwillingness, and soon was swinging the broom as briskly and as awkwardly as was Aggie. Still it was not a pleasant task, and when she came out of the school-room, coughing, sneezing, and wiping the dust out of her eyes, she found words for her disgust:
“Ugh! Nasty work! I’m glad there’s thirty-four more to sweep before it comes our turn again. Let’s see, thirty-four, two at a time, that’s seventeen days. Nearly a month before we’ll have to sweep again, Aggie!”
But Patty was doomed to disappointment, for at the moment she was making this clearly expressed calculation, Miss Kelsey was also giving the sweeping question serious thought.
“It is going to be a hard matter to persuade these children to do the sweeping,” thought she. “I suppose most of the mothers can find something for them to do, and the little rogues who have always loitered and played half an hour or more on their way home, will come to-morrow with a fine assortment of excuses, all to the effect that they must be at home immediately after school. I think I had better change the plan and make the sweeping a punishment for whispering. They will not care to tell their parents that they are detained for misdemeanors, and it will put a check on the whispering too.”
So the next morning as soon as school opened she told the pupils she should appoint to the sweeping, that night, the first two that she should see whispering.
“O, my goodness gracious!” said thoughtless Flindy Jenkins to herself in a loud whisper, “I’ll get caught sure.” And sure enough she did, for down went her name in Miss Kelsey’s “black book.”
Whispering was Patty’s besetting sin, and on hearing Miss Kelsey’s decision she buttoned up her mouth very tightly indeed, and resolved not to open it again until some one else was caught, and she would no doubt have kept this politic resolution had she not soon after spied little Biddy Maginnis in the act of whisking out of a knot-hole in the desk a bunch of violets that Patty had, a short time before, fastened there. They were the first violets of the season and Biddy wanted to smell of them, but Patty did not like to have her treasures so roughly handled and in the excitement of a moment forgot everything else.
“Give those back here,” she said, fiercely, and almost aloud.
“Patty Curtis,” said Miss Kelsey, as she wrote her name under that of Flindy Jenkins, “I am sorry to say that you will have to sweep again to-night.” And Patty with a gasp of shame and surprise, sank back into her seat with her rescued flowers.
“It’s too bad,” she said to herself as she heard the children around her giggle, and in spite of her efforts the tears chased each other down her cheeks, giving the pretty violets a salt bath. The tears stopped after a while, but Patty did not recover from her vexation: she sulked all day, and was sulky still when she took the broom in hand after school. She would show Miss Kelsey, she thought in her naughty little heart, that the school-room would look but precious little better for her being kept to sweep it.
Flindy Jenkins was a poor companion for a little girl in such a frame of mind, and she really fell in with Patty’s suggestion that they sweep so the school-room should “look like Biddy Maginnises’ house in the Hollow;” and when Miss Kelsey came to school early the next morning she found the room looking worse, if possible, than if it had not been swept at all.
That afternoon Miss Kelsey sat at her desk thinking so intently about the sweeping, that she did not see Aggie Bentley standing beside her until the little girl spoke timidly:
“Please, Miss Kelsey, may Patty Curtis and I go out and play a little while? we have got all our lessons.”
Miss Kelsey glanced over to Patty and saw an eager face shadowed by a very doubting expression, for the little girl knew she deserved no play-time after her conduct of the night before. So she was surprised to see Miss Kelsey’s face brighten, and to hear her give a cordial consent. The truth was that Miss Kelsey had suddenly solved the problem that had been troubling her for several days. Offer as reward to the two that would sweep, a half hour’s extra recess when lessons were learned! Why had she not thought of it before? for if there was anything more coveted than “reward cards,” it was these “half hours.” Before school closed she made a simple statement of her new plan, and was amused to see what an electrifying effect it had upon the children; and when they were dismissed what a scramble there was for the brooms! if there had been thirty-six of these, thirty-six children would soon have been sweeping away at the floor of the little school-room; as there were but two, great was the pulling and twisting they received, and loud the uproar among those who wanted to use them. The trouble was soon settled by Miss Kelsey, who took possession of the brooms and said the two should sweep who came first in the morning.
Patty Curtis was now in luck, for the fact that her mother had nothing for her to do at home, which had been such a draw-back to her before, would be the greatest help now; she could come to the school-house as early as she liked while other little girls had to wash dishes, or rock cradles, and the boys had wood to split and cows to drive to pasture.
The next morning Patty was the first one at the school-house, and she had nearly finished half the sweeping when Sarah Adams came, so she and Sarah had the half hour play together. Sarah was two years older than Patty, and a very quarrelsome girl, and she and Patty succeeded in quarelling so over the play-house they were building that neither little girl got much enjoyment from the reward of her labor.
As Patty intended to sweep the next morning, and did not want Sarah for a playmate, she lingered after school was dismissed to make arrangements with Aggie Bentley to assist her. They agreed that Aggie was to prevail upon her indulgent mother to allow her to start for school as soon as she ate her breakfast. Patty was to go at the same time, and they would have the sweeping done before Sarah, or any one else, should arrive.
But when the two little girls went into the entry to get their sunbonnets they noticed that the brooms were gone from the corner where they always stood.
“Perhaps they have been carried out of doors,” said Patty, and she looked out on the steps and in various possible and impossible places, but in vain; then she went into the house and told Miss Kelsey that the brooms were gone, and Miss Kelsey helped the little girls search. At last they all gave up. Then the teacher spoke:
“I suspect, Patty, some of the pupils think you have done enough sweeping for a while, and want to give you a rest, so have hidden the brooms. Never mind, you will have many more chances to do the sweeping, and besides you ought not to want all the half hours for yourself.”
But this did not comfort Patty very much; you will see she was rather a selfish little girl, and she did want all the half hours, as well as all other obtainable good things, for herself.
“It is that Sarah Adams who has hid them brooms,” she said to Aggie as they walked home together, “and she has just done it for spite. I wish I could think of some way to get ahead of her, but I can’t.”
“Well, we won’t have to go to school so early,” said Aggie; “you come over to my house and we will have a nice play before the bell rings.”
Before dark, however, Patty had thought of a way to “get ahead” of Sarah Adams. This was simply, to take a broom with her when she went to school the next morning. But a lion in the form of Patty’s mother stood in the way of her getting a broom; Patty knew she would never allow one to be taken away from home; if Patty took one she must take it without permission. Now there were but two brooms in the house; one stood in the kitchen and was in such constant use that Patty knew it would be missed long before she could return it; the other was kept in the hall closet and was used once a week, in sweeping the parlor and “spare room,” and the day before had been the regular sweeping day. This she must take if she took either, altho’ she knew she should not, but she did not allow herself time enough to think about it to be persuaded out of the notion; she took the broom from the closet, and in the gathering darkness carried it to a hiding place between the wood shed and the pig-pen, and then went to bed to be tormented all night with visions of her mother’s best broom:—an old beggar woman stole it away; a black witch mounted it, and rode to the moon, never to return; and lastly, Sarah Adams found it, and knowing Patty intended sweeping with it burned it up before her very eyes. Patty was glad when morning came, and she hurried out to assure herself of the safety of the broom, as soon as she was dressed. When she had eaten her breakfast she started to school with the broom, and stopped for Aggie Bentley. Aggie found an old broom which her mother said she might take. They swept and dusted the room in high glee, and Patty had perched herself upon one of the front desks, and sat kicking her heels in triumph, when Sarah Adams and Hattie Bitner entered with the hidden brooms.
“Needn’t mind sweeping this morning, girls,” said Patty; “and the next time you hide brooms you’d better hide all in Sagetown.”
“I’ll pay you up, miss,” said Sarah, when she had recovered from her astonishment, and she and Hattie threw down their brooms and left the room in high wrath.
Some way Patty did not enjoy her half hour play that morning; she was fearful that she might not be able to get her mother’s broom back into the house without being discovered, and Sarah’s threat troubled her; what means Sarah would take to get her into trouble she could not imagine.
That evening as Patty sat at home, swinging back and forth in her little rocking-chair, who should come to make her a visit but Sarah; that hypocritical young woman was as smiling and as amiable as possible, but she declined all of Patty’s invitations to “go out and play;” this made Patty uneasy, she wished Sarah would go home. Pretty soon Patty’s mother came in and sat down, and Sarah immediately began talking about school and Miss Kelsey’s plans for the sweeping. Patty grew still more uneasy and made another effort to get Sarah out of doors, but when Sarah said—
“My mother said she thought it was so queer that Mrs. Curtis should let Patty take a new broom from home to sweep that dirty school-house with,”—then Patty resigned herself to her fate.
“Patty Curtis! you don’t mean to say that you took my best broom to the school-house,” said Mrs. Curtis, dropping her knitting in her astonishment.
“Yes I did,” said Patty; “but I wouldn’t, if that mean thing there hadn’t hid the brooms.”
“And I,” said Sarah, “wouldn’t have hid ’em, if you hadn’t been so stingy as to want all the play-times yourself.”
“There, that will do for you both,” said Mrs. Curtis. “Patty, you may get yourself a bowl of bread and milk for your supper, and go to bed immediately.”
This, Mrs. Curtis considered a very light punishment; it would have been much heavier if her motherly indignation had not been a little stirred against Sarah for playing informer; but to Patty it was hard enough, for she had intended going out on the common with the girls, late in the evening, for a game of “black man” by the light of the rising moon; and as she eat her bread and milk, crying quietly to herself, she heard Sarah’s taunting voice under the window:
“Don’t you wish you’d let me sweep, so you could play ‘black man’ to-night?”
“Don’t care,” answered Patty; “I had a play when you didn’t, and I’ll have another to-morrow.”
So she did, and though Miss Kelsey interfered to prevent Patty from having a monopoly of the sweeping, still she did it so often that before the term closed she became a famous sweeper, and her mother actually allowed her to take charge of the sweeping of the sitting-room at home, and was not at all sorry that Miss Kelsey had proved such a skillful tactician.