"Set down an' shut up," commanded Patrick Brennan. "We're goin' to begin."
The shutting up would have been effected automatically by the next proceeding of the seven. They laid violent hands upon themselves and in an instant a flat little heap of dark clothes marked the centre of the yard, and Patrick Brennan, Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, Isidore Applebaum, Nathan Spiderwitz, Isidore Wishnewsky, Isaac Belchatosky, and Morris Mowgelewsky stood forth in costumes reported by Isaac Borrachsohn, sanctioned by Miss Bailey, and owned by members of the audience.
A moment of tense silence followed. Every eye sought Teacher, and Constance Bailey knew that upon her first word or look depended success or failure, pride or everlasting shame. There was no time to wonder how the mistake arose. No time to remember what she had said that could possibly have been interpreted to mean this. They were her gallant little knights doing her uncomprehended bidding, and trying—at what sacrifice she guessed—to pleasure their liege lady.
Again she had blundered. Again she had failed to quite bridge the distance. The wrong word lay somewhere back in her effort to undo Isaac Borrachsohn's mischief. And she had wrought mischief ten times worse. The most devoted of her charges stood there in the clear May sunshine; the funniest, most pathetic, most ridiculous little figures, with their thin little arms and legs and their long little necks: proud, embarrassed, wistful.
"My dear boys," she cried suddenly, "how fine you look! How beautiful and—and—clean you are," she went on a little bit at random. "And now we are going to have games, and the girls and I will cheer the winners."
"Be ye s'prised?" yelled Patrick in irrepressible pride.
"Dreadfully!" she answered. "Dreadfully, Patrick dear."
"Then we'll begin," answered the master of ceremonies. "One, git in yer places! Two, fer a show! Three, to make ready! And four to GO."
Upon his final word the "Games in Gardens" began. The two Isidores and Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein rushed madly round the yard. Patrick tried to urge the others to follow, but Morris had elected the long jump—and the long jump he would perform, all protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Nathan Spiderwitz grasped the clothes pole and vaulted with great accuracy into the left wing of the grand stand. Isaac Belchatosky had secured a dilapidated ball from an abandoned bowling-alley, and he "put the shot" in all directions to his own satisfaction and the audience's terror until run into and overturned by Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein.
Shrill cries went up from the audience. The two boys arose unhurt, but the feelings of Bertha Binderwitz and Eva Kidansky were not thereby soothed.