Well, Patrick followed her. It was the first command of hers to which he had given favorable ear. He even went with alacrity—and the novices in the Second Reader gazed wildly upon one another. They may not have been quick to memorize incomprehensible and unexplained "memory gems," or to carry in their heads long strings of figures unconnected with anything in sea or sky. But Miss Bailey's training had made them experts in recognizing cause and effect, and such an epidemic of lawlessness and mischief swept over Room 19 as even Miss Blake's ten years' experience had never paralleled. "Bailey's Babies" went suddenly and unanimously to the dogs. The energy which they had expended in being "'moted" was as nothing to the delirious determination with which they fought for retrogradation. They dutifully called to mind all Miss Bailey's precepts, and then crashed through them, one by one. They fell from grace, from truth, from cleanliness, from all the moral heights upon which Teacher had perched them, and, as they fell, they set in motion the machinery provided by the Board of Education. Mesdames Gonorowsky, Mowgelewsky and Borrachsohn, and other matrons began to find the tenor of their days interrupted by incomprehensible post-cards, and a regrettably comprehensible Truant Officer. "Bailey's Babies" were running amuck, and their cries as they committed moral hara-kiri echoed as far as the marble halls of the Board of Education on remote Park Avenue.
Mrs. Gonorowsky paid the exorbitant price of a cent to have her official postcard read by an interpreter. Neighbors volunteered for this service, but she would have none of them. She wanted an authoritative reading, and having got it, she sat down to await the return of Eva.
"So-o-oh," ran the maternal greeting, "you comes three times late on the school mit dirty faces." Eva hung her guilty head. "And I wash you every day the face, und send you on the block plenty time? Hein?" Eva nodded the guilty head. "Und now comes such a card from off the school sayin' how you comes late und dirty, und the Principal, he wants he shall see me to-morrow, quarter after three." A silence followed these thunderous words. Eva's guilt engulfed her, although hers was the clearest conscience among all the candidates for return tickets. Her gentle spirit had been unequal to the orgy in which braver souls were wallowing.
"I wants," she whispered now, "I wants I shall be put back. I don't likes it by Miss Blakeses room. I ain't monitors off of nothings, und Miss Blake she hollers on me, und Patrick he is put back. I likes I shall be put back too."
"Sooner you feels like that," said Mrs. Gonorowsky with sound logic, "why aind you stayed back by Miss Bailey's room? Aind you told me how you wants you shall be 'moted, and learn off a new book?"
"Not 'out Miss Bailey," Eva protested. "I couldn't to learn 'out Miss Bailey. I want Miss Bailey shall be 'moted too."
"Und why ain't she 'moted?" demanded the voice of reason.
At this question—its answer had long been torture to her loyal little heart—Eva broke into wild tears. Changing over to the voice of love, Mrs. Gonorowsky soothed and cuddled and petted her until Eva found speech again.
"It's somethin' fierce," she whispered. "In all my world I ain't never seen how it is fierce. I shall better, maybe, whisper mit you in the ear. It's like this: She ain't smart enough. Becky Zalmanowsky, she ain't smart enough, und Hymie Solomon, he ain't smart enough, und Jakey Fishandler, he is a greeney, und Teacher, she gets left back mit them."
"Gott!" cried Mrs. Gonorowsky, "who says she ain't smart enough?"