“Oh, maybe,” he admitted.
“Then what will you do for me? You can’t expect me to amuse you big boys the whole evening, while you do nothing to amuse me in return. This is a club, you know. In a club everybody does something for everybody else.”
“What you like?” demanded Rafael, with suppressed eagerness.
“Yes, what you like?” echoed Pietro, the quarrel between them quite forgotten.
“I’m very fond of pictures,” announced Eleanor gravely. “If you’d each draw a picture of Robin Hood on the blackboard over there—here are a lot of colored chalks—and put his name under it—Robin, we’ll call him for short—why, I should think you’d done your full share.”
The Terrible Ten exchanged bewildered glances, and one after another slouched nonchalantly to the chalk box. The colored crayons were a novelty, nine of the Terrible Ten were born artists, and the tenth—Rafael, whose crushed hand was still stiff and awkward—was pathetically anxious to satisfy the new teacher’s strange demands. His Robin Hood looked like a many colored smutch, with a sprawling green frame around it—that was Sherwood forest, thrown in for good measure.
“Don’t forget the name,” Eleanor reminded them calmly, when, the pictures finished, the artists began to exchange furtive glances again in regard to the next requirement.
“You make lil’ sample on mine,” suggested Rafael craftily.
“No, I’ll make one up here,” Eleanor amended, “where everybody can see it.”
And to her surprise the Terrible Ten, with many sighs and grimaces, and much smutting out of mistakes with wetted fingers, toilsomely accomplished the writing.