"I'll go with her," said Tess, knowing that her little sister did not like to retire alone, even if she might object to the company of chickens.
Really, none of them studied much on this evening; but they had a happy time. All, possibly, save Sammy. The thought of going to school once again made that embryo pirate very despondent.
"'Tain't that I wouldn't like to go with the fellers, and play at recess, and hear the organ play in the big hall, and spin tops on the basement play-room floor, and all that," grumbled Sammy. "But they do try to learn us such perfectly silly things."
"What silly things?" demanded Agnes with amusement.
"Why, all 'bout 'rithmetic. Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers? What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthful philosopher.
"Ow! ow!" murmured Neale, vastly amused.
"Huh!" went on Sammy. "Last teacher I had—mine and Tessie's—was all the time learning us maxims, and what things meant; like love, and charity and happiness. She was so silly, she was!
"That Iky Goronofsky is the thick one," added Sammy, with a grin of recollection. "When she was trying to make us kids understand the difference between the meaning of those three words he couldn't get it into his head. So she gave him three buttons, one for love, one for charity and one for happiness, and made him take 'em home to study."
"What did he do with them!" asked Neale, interested.
"Why, when she asked Iky the next time about love, charity and happiness, he didn't know any more than he did before," said Sammy, with disgust. 'Where's your buttons, Iky?' she asks him, and Iky hauls out two of 'em.