Clif was lying, face downwards, on the floor in the dining-room, with Scott’s Pirate for companion, and, as might be imagined, his charges were following, unchecked, their own sweet wills. This morning this happened to be scratching “capital A’s,” which they had just learned to make, on the seats and backs of the chairs.
“Oh, guess,” cried Teddie, bursting in, “guess what, Clif!”
“What?” said Clif, but the Pirate’s doings were too engrossing for him to lift his eyes.
“‘Brownses’ is taken,” said Teddie, “and it’s a school that’s coming.”
Clif dropped his book and drew a great breath. School was what he had ardently desired for almost two years. It had seemed so babyish, so unmanly, to be kept hanging about home each and every day, doing a few simple tasks amid all manner of interruptions, for his father and mother to correct, pushing the perambulator up and down the paths or the road, forced to play most of his time in the dull patch of ground, called by courtesy the garden, so that he [144] ]might keep a watch on those restless spirits, Richie and Alf.
He got up, quite trembling with excitement.
“Let’s go and look,” he said, and the next minute was scrambling over the fence that separated the two orchards.
No wonder Teddie had been excited at the change that had taken place at “Brownses” since the day before. All the windows were flung open, the almost obliterated “To Let” notice had gone, and a woman, who lived near, was scrubbing away at the dirty floors.
The lads fairly fell upon her with their questions: “When was the school coming? Which was going to be the school-room? Had the teacher got maps and a black-board? Did she teach out of Little Arthur’s History, or The Royal, and would they have arithmetic every day?”
[The woman ran them] out of the house at last with her broom and locked herself in, and they were forced to walk around outside and make conjectures about the things they could not find out.