“I can’t see why all you little children find so much fault with Philip,” she said reprovingly. “What if he did put his clothes-pin on his nose? It was a foolish thing to do, but why need you do it? You have made more trouble than he, Marantha, for you frightened little Richard!”
Marantha’s desperation was dreadful to witness. She realized that her vocabulary was hopelessly inadequate to her situation: she knew herself unable to present her case effectively, but she felt that she was the victim of a glaring injustice. Her chin quivered, she sank upon the stairs, and her tears were even as the tears of Joseph Zukoffsky.
The youngest assistant now appeared on the scene.
“Miss Hunt wants to know why you’re so late with them,” she inquired. “She hopes nothing’s the matter. Mrs. R. B. M. Smith is here to-day to visit the primary schools and kindergartens, and——”
“Oh, goodness!” the attempted consolation of Marantha ceased abruptly. “I can’t bear that woman! She’s always read Stanley Hall’s last article that proves that what he said before was wrong! Come along, Marantha, and don’t be a foolish little girl any longer. We shall be late for the morning exercise.”
Upstairs a large circle was forming under the critical scrutiny of a short, stout woman with crinkly, gray hair. They took their places, Marantha pink-nosed and mutinous, Joseph not yet recovered from a distressing tendency to burst out into gulping sobs—he was naturally pessimistic and treasured his grievances indefinitely. Philip’s eyes were fixed upon the floor.
“Now what shall we sing?” inquired the principal briskly. “I think we will let Joseph choose, because he doesn’t look very happy this bright morning. Perhaps we can cheer him up.”
“Marantha ... upheld Joseph with all her powers of heart and voice.”
In a husky voice Joseph suggested “My heart is God’s little garden.” In reply to Miss Hunt’s opening question Eddy Brown had proposed “Happy greeting to the rain,” a sufficiently maudlin request, as there was absolutely no indication of that climatic condition, past, present, or future. Eddy possessed the not unusual combination of a weak mind and a strong voice, and though the piano prelude was that of Joseph’s choice, the effect of a voice near him starting the well-known air of his own suggestion was overwhelming, and Eddy began shouting it lustily. Marantha, whose susceptibilities were, like those of others of her sex, distinctly sharpened by suffering, knew well enough who was responsible for the rival chorus, and upheld Joseph with all her powers of heart and voice. The tunes in question were, like many of the kindergarten repertoire, somewhat similar, and a few seconds of chaotic discords amazed Mrs. R. B. M. Smith and vexed the teachers.