Miss Bailey chanced to be looking at her old friend, and at the child's voice saw him cringe and shrink as if from a blow.
"There it is again," she cried. "That's all we can get him to say. Tell me, Mr. Eissler, what does it mean?"
She got no answer.
The man, in all the dignity of his cutaway and his white linen, was glaring at the child, and the child, in his ridiculous rags, pitiful, starved, and dirty, was looking the man over from top to toe with contemptuous, careless eyes. They stood so for some space, and it was the man who turned away.
"I will not pretend not to understand," said he to Teacher; "but I must decline to translate those words. They bring back—they bring back! Ah, God! what they bring back!"
"Ah, yes, I know!" said Miss Bailey, in vague but ready sympathy. "I'm very, very sorry."
While this conversation was in progress its object was wandering about Room 18, surveying its pictures, the canary, the gold-fish bowl, and the flowery window-boxes with a blasé air. Occasionally he glanced at Miss Bailey with unfriendly disillusionment. And upon one of these occasions Mr. Eissler, at Teacher's request, asked him his name.
The boy answered at greater length than before, but, judging by the man's face, in equally offensive language, and Mr. Eissler turned to Miss Bailey.
"The Principal will have some difficulty," said he, "in finding a teacher who could speak that child's language. It's Russian, pure Court Russian, and not spoken by our people except when they make a special study of it. I know it, a little."
"And do you care to tell me," asked Miss Bailey, "any part of what he said just now?"