"He says," the man replied, "that he will not speak to Jews or to—and by this he means you—a seeming Christian, who makes the Jew her friend, and allows Jewish babies to touch her hands. You've read of the Russian autocratic spirit. Well! there you see it. Even in a little child. It's born in them."
"But how did it get here?" marvelled Miss Bailey. "Here, on the East Side of New York, where he must be just about as popular as a wolf cub?"
"Just about," answered Eissler. "Of course I'm not going to pretend to tell you how this particular specimen got here. We've had one or two cases where the Jews, driven out, kidnapped a Russian child in revenge. And sometimes Nihilism and other Socialistic societies draw Jew and Russian together. Perhaps the boy's mother is in Siberia digging sulphur. Perhaps she's in Petersburg, designing becoming mourning. But from the look of the boy and the Truant Officer's account of him, I feel pretty safe in saying she isn't about here."
"Yes, I think you're safe in that. He hasn't been washed in a month."
"He'll be better after you've had him awhile," said Mr. Eissler gallantly. "I back you against Hagenbeck as a taming influence."
"You flatter me," laughed Miss Bailey. "But I'll try. Of course I'll try." But she had scant opportunity.
At luncheon time the new little boy departed with the others, and at afternoon session he was not among them, as by law prescribed.
Day after day passed and brought no sign of him. Teacher reported her bereavement to the authorities, and enjoined the First Readers to produce the boy or tidings of him, and although they failed to procure the boy, the tidings were not wanting. They rarely are in East Side affairs. Morris Mowgelewsky was the first to procure definite information.
"I seen that boy," he announced with pride. "I seen him runnin' down Scannel Street, und I calls und says you likes you should see him in the school, on'y he runs by a cellar und don't says nothings. He puts him on just like he was here, und he had awful cold looks. Teacher, he ain't got no hat, and the snow was coming by his hair. I looks in the cellar und I had a 'fraid over it the whiles nothings stand in it on'y push-carts und boxes."
"But do you think that he lives in the cellar?" queried Teacher.