"I guess I gets killed off of my mamma," wailed Bertha when she saw that one whole side of Isaac Belchatosky was smeared with mud. And when Nathan Spiderwitz was reclaimed from the soap boxes, with a long piece of cambric ruffle trailing behind him, Sadie Gonorowsky fell into such an agony of apprehension that Miss Bailey felt called upon for a promise to repair the damage ere another sun should set. Meantime Patrick was not idle. Disdaining competition, he went through all the "events," one after another until the perspiration was thick upon his forehead, and Eva Gonorowsky was trembling with excitement.
"My mamma don't know," she informed Miss Bailey over and over again. But owing perhaps to her watchful care, perhaps to a natural aptitude for athletics, Patrick escaped unspotted and unscathed.
He turned hand-springs upon the heap of clothes. He stood upon his head upon the same rostrum until his eyes bulged, and Miss Bailey implored him to desist. He wrested the shot from Isidore Wishnewsky, a person of no spirit, and then he "put" it neatly into the waist line of its owner, who promptly sat back gasping.
"Don't you dast to set, Isidore Wishnewsky," shrilled Sarah Schodsky in a panic. "I guess you dunno what is polite for you. Sooner somebody lends you somethings it ain't polite you should set on it! Ain't it fierce how he makes, Missis Bailey?"
"It is a little rude," Miss Bailey admitted in a voice as unsteady as Isidore Wishnewsky.
"I never in my world seen how they all makes," said Yetta Aaronsohn, that authority on Hygiene and the Care of the Body. "They could to make themselves awful sicknesses over it—home sicknesses, even, und lay-on-the-bed sicknesses, und comes-the-doctor sicknesses."
"Oh, I hope not!" Teacher rallied the pessimistic Yetta, "though they certainly do seem to be getting very tired."
By this time the track team of the First Reader Class had exhausted itself and its repertoire, and came forward, hot but confident, for its laurels. There was something for each one, and for each a little word of special commendation. And if Teacher's voice was more tender, her eyes more gentle when Morris's turn came, she still was gentle and tender enough with all of them.
"I never in my world seen how they all makes"