The lad's aplomb and dignity deserted him. He blushed furiously, and hung his head in shame of his Moderate parent.
'Never mind, Comrade Kalman,' said another boy, slapping his shoulder consolingly. 'We've all got some shady relative or another.'
A shrill burst of applause relieved the painful situation. Turning his head, David found all the childish eyes converged upon a single figure, a bulging-headed lad who had sprung into a sudden position of eminence—upon an egg-box. He was clothed in the blue blouse of Radicalism and irreligion, and the faint down upon his upper lip suggested that he must be nearing fifteen.
'Comrades!' he was crying. 'In my youth I myself was head boy at this school of yours, but even in those old days there was the same brutal autocracy. Your only remedy is a general strike. You must join the Syndical Anarchists.'
More shrill cheers greeted this fiery counsel. The members of the Junior Bund waved their satchels frenziedly. Only the landlord's son stood mute and frowning.
'You don't agree with him,' said David.
'No,' answered the little Bundist gravely. 'I follow Comrade Berl. But this fellow is popular because he was expelled from the Warsaw gymnasium as a suspect.'
'You must strike!' repeated the juvenile agitator. 'A strike is the only way of impressing the proletarian psychology. You must all swear to attend school no more till your demands are granted.'
'We swear!' came from all sides in a childish treble. But the frown on the brow of the landlord's son grew darker.
'It is well, comrades,' said the orator. 'Your success will be a lesson to your elders, too. Only by applying the Marxian philosophy of history can we upset the bourgeois Weltanschauung.'