“And t’en t’ey send dere children to him and make beeg stories how great is that man!
“Oh, put the dead insect on the hook, my friend: or there will be no little pupils and we will be so hungry to teach t’at we fall on each other and teach.”
It was precisely as Kate had predicted. She seemed to know exactly where to drop her printed bait. By August she had closed the doors and had engineered a waiting list, for they were resolved the first year to begin with small numbers.
“We’ll pay you your wages and have something besides for improvements,” she announced to Blynn.
Of all that enthusiastic lot of teachers he was the only one who could not afford to give his time without salary. It hurt him to take that money, but his good sense showed him that there was no other way out. It was shame of the sort that Bardek thought so strange, and it must be downed. He reflected with some grimness that while the others were giving energy, joy, and enthusiasm to the work, he was offering all that and something much harder to give, his pride as an independent man.
“Top-o’-the-Hill”
To no one he spoke of this. In spite of his innocence and in spite of the face which, as Bardek claimed, he wore for the most part “on the outside,” Blynn could mask a hundred worries back of his Pestalozzian smile. Yet Gorgas knew. She had pieced together his jests and his half-uttered opinions.
They had worked all day together on a baseball diamond and were celebrating the conclusion by a picnic supper on the grounds of “Top-o’-the-Hill.”
“Mein guter Kamarade,” she whispered, “you mustn’t feel bad about that fool salary.”