"Come here!" said the Principal. At the sound of his voice the child turned and looked at him, and the man found himself returning the cool regard of a pair of violet-blue eyes. Blue eyes picked up in the heart of that dusky neighborhood, where he had learned to expect all children's eyes to be either black or brown!
"I wonder what he is, and where he comes from," he sighed, as he rang the bell and summoned the teacher who generally acted as his interpreter. "David Copperfield's poor old friend, Mr. Dick, would find plenty of use for his famous prescription, 'wash him,' if he were in my place."
Miss Rosen soon arrived and began her usual inquiries as to name, age, residence. The little stranger heard her through, and then he uttered a sharp three or four word sentence, clear cut, imperious; and Miss Rosen, a sweet and portly lady of fifteen years' faithful teaching, flushed to the edge of her hard black pompadour, and stared, incredulous, at the ragged form before her.
"Well," said the Principal, as she made no effort at translation. "What does he say?"
"I do not speak his language," she answered.
"And yet you understand him?"
"I understand him—yes——"
"Well," repeated the Principal, in no mind to allow one small boy to upset his morning's routine, "well, if you understand him, tell me what he said. What language was that he used?"
"Russian," she replied, "pure Russian, and what he said is the only Russian phrase which many of the Jewish people ever hear. I have not heard it since I escaped from Russia with my parents years and years ago. I had hoped never to hear it again. I must refuse to translate it to you."
When she had gone, all shaken, back to her class, the Principal shook a remonstrating head at his captive, who was by this time examining the book-case with a disparaging eye. Catching the man's glance, he made some remark in his liquid speech, and thumped his chest.