The kids are going swimming; the signal has been passed along. You have set your heart upon going with them. Consequently, never have you felt so repentant, so full of high resolves and the best intentions, and your appealing gaze might well have moved a stone, to say nothing of a teacher.
“Those whose names I read may remain,” she announces calmly: “Sam Jessup, Dolly Smith, Horace Brown, Leonard Irving, Patrick Conroy, Olga Jansen, John Walker!”
“STAYIN’-AFTER-SCHOOL”
Crushed, you hear the second tap; freed, the others rise; out they file, but you stay behind—you and a few companions in misery scattered at wide intervals through the nearly deserted room.
From without sound gay shouts and laughter, growing fainter and fainter, and dying in the distance.
You are marooned.
“Take your books and go to work at some lesson!” orders the teacher.
Maybe, if you strive hard and obediently, she will let you go soon. Some of the prisoners shuffle angrily, and rebelliously bang things about in their desks; but you promptly open your geography, and hoping that her eye is noting you, pretend to apply yourself to its text. Silence falls, broken only by the measured tick-tock of the clock on the wall.
Presently you glance up. Five minutes have passed. “Teacher,” with eyes fastened upon her desk, is engaged in correcting a quantity of exercises. She seems to pay not the slightest attention to the clock.