[Illustration: "I GOT TWO SWOLLEN LEGS OVER HER">[
"Well, dear, that's a shame," said Teacher, "and if you really don't understand, go out into the assembly room and wait for me. Sadie is going to tell me all about it."
Eva vanished, only to return with the lurid bandage in her hand and the query:—"Can I make this wet?"
Upon receiving permission so to do she retired with her courteous "Good-afternoon, Teacher," and her unchanged "Good-by, Sadie; I'm got yet that kind feelin'." Truly the "pangs of disprized love" seemed hers.
Several kinds of persuasion were practised in Room 18 during the next five minutes. Then Sadie accepted defeat, faced the inevitable, and began:
"It's like this: I dassent to be glad on Eva. So I want even, I dassent.
My mamma has the same mad, und my papa. My mamma she says like this:
So my papa gets sooner glad on my uncle she wouldn't to be wifes mit
him no more! Such is the mad she has!"
"Why?"
"Well. Mine uncle he come out of Russia. From long he come when I was a little bit of baby. Und he didn't to have no money for buy a house. So my papa—he's awful kind—he gives him thousen dollers so he could to buy. Und say, Teacher, what you think? he don't pays it back. It ain't polite you takes thousen dollers und don't pays it back."
Sadie's air, as she submitted this rule of social etiquette to Teacher's wider knowledge, was a wondrous thing to see—so deferential was it and yet so assured.
"So my papa he writes a letter on my uncle how he could to pay that thousen dollers. Goes months. Comes no thousen dollers. So my papa he goes on the lawyer und the lawyer he writes on my uncle a letter how he should to pay. Goes months. Comes no thousen dollers." At each repetition of these fateful words Sadie shook her serious head, pursed up her rosy mouth, folded her hands resignedly, and sighed deeply. Clearly this was a tale more than twice told, for the voice and manner of Sadie were as the voice and manner of Mrs. Lazarus Gonorowsky, and the recital was plagiarism—masterly and complete.