Eva Gonorowsky had but reflected the general opinion when she told her mother that Miss Bailey had been left back "because she wasn't smart enough," and the Principal found himself in the midst of an indignation meeting. In Yiddish, in English, in all grades and dialects between the two, the mothers protested against this ruling.
There was hardly one of them who did not owe Miss Bailey some meed of gratitude—and they were of a race which still practises that virtue.
So they made ovation, fervid, gesticulatory, and obscure. But through much harping on one theme they made their meaning clear.
"So you think," said the Principal, "that Miss Bailey is still teaching the smallest children because she is not as clever as the other teachers. You never were more mistaken in your lives. The hardest child to teach and manage, as all of you very well know, is the smallest child. The very best teaching should come at the very beginning."
This statement, when it was translated by those who understood it to those who did not, met with a cordial rumble of approval.
"Your children," he went on, "are old enough now to be taught by an ordinary teacher. Miss Blake is much more than that."
This translated was not very well received. Stout inarticulate mothers drew their shawls more closely about them and grunted dissent.
"But although they are old enough they haven't been proving themselves good enough, and so I have decided—as you express it—to promote Miss Bailey too, and to let her have charge of them until the end of the year. I shall notify Miss Blake to-morrow. Meanwhile, if you ladies will go up to Room 18 I think you will find your children there, and I know you will find Miss Bailey. Perhaps," he added with a smile, "she would be glad to receive your congratulations upon her promotion."
The mothers steamed and streamed away, led by Mrs. Mowgelewsky whose wig was very much awry, and by Mrs. Gonorowsky, whose mind was in a triumphant flame, while far in the rear there pattered the grandmother of Isidore Applebaum, whose mind was quite unchanged by the events of the afternoon.
Isidore had managed to explain Miss Bailey's disabilities to her, but her almost complete deafness left her quite unmoved by the Principal's eloquence in either original or translated form. She only knew that Miss Bailey had been at last allowed to retain the guardianship of Isidore.