"He marches first by the line too. He's two monitors."
"He truly is," agreed Miss Bailey. "Well, I shall let you try that some day."
It was a most disastrous experiment. The First Reader Class, serenely good under the eye of Patrick Brennan, who wore one of the discarded brass buttons of his sire pinned to the breast of his shirt-waist, found nothing to fear or to obey in his supplanter, and Miss Bailey returned to her kingdom to find it in an uproar and her regent in tears.
"I don't likes it. I don't likes it," Yetta wailed. "All the boys shows a fist on me. All the girls makes a snoot on me. All the childrens say cheek on me. I don't likes it. I don't likes it."
"Then you sha'n't do it again," Teacher comforted her. "You needn't be a monitor if you don't wish."
"But I likes I shall be monitors. On'y not that kind from monitors."
"If you can think of something you would enjoy I shall let you try again. But it must be something, dear, that no one is doing for me."
But Yetta could think of nothing until one afternoon when she was sitting at Teacher's desk during a Swedish drill. All about her were Teacher's things. Her large green blotter, her "from gold" inkstand and pens, her books where Fairies lived. Miss Bailey was standing directly in front of the desk and encouraging the First Reader Class—by command and example—to strenuous waving of arms and bending of bodies.
"Forward bend!" commanded, and bent, Miss Bailey and her buttoned-in-back-waist followed the example of less fashionable models, shed its pearl buttons in a shower upon the smooth blotter and gave Yetta the inspiration for which she had been waiting. She gathered the buttons, extracted numerous pins from posts of trust in her attire, and when Miss Bailey had returned to her chair, gently set about repairing the breach.
"What is it?" asked Miss Bailey. Yetta, her mouth full of pins, exhibited the buttons.