He held it up for Dennis to see. He wanted to tell him about Diddy and the Fair, but the Master saw what he had done. “Come here, Larry McQueen, and bring your slate,” he said. “Sure, I’ll teach you better manners. Get up on this stool now, and show yourself.” He put a large paper dunce-cap on Larry’s head, and made him sit up on a stool before the whole school!
The other children laughed, all but Eileen. She hid her face on her desk, and two little tears squeezed out between her fingers. But Larry didn’t cry. He pretended he didn’t care at all. He sat there for what seemed a very long time, while other children recited other lessons in reading, and grammar, and arithmetic. The Master gave him this poem to learn by heart:—
“I thank the Goodness and the Grace
That on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days,
A happy English child.”
Larry wondered why he was called an English child, when he knew he was Irish. And he wasn’t so sure either about the “Christian days”; but he learned it and said it to the teacher before he got down off the stool. It seemed to him that it was about three days before noontime came. At last they were dismissed, and the Twins went out with the other children into the schoolyard to eat their luncheon. Dennis ate his with them, and Larry told him the Secret.
After lunch they went back into the dark, smoky little schoolroom for more lessons, and when three o’clock came, how glad they were to go dancing out into the sunshine again, and walk home along the familiar road, with the air sweet about them, and the little birds singing in the fields.