“Oh, well! then you needn’t; but I guess I can guess.”
“I guess you can guess all you like,” said mamma, smiling again.
“One thing more I remember now that happened during that famous visit, which was not quite so tragical as the death of the poor kitten.”
CHAPTER III
A SCHOOLGIRL’S JOKE
The school to which Helen went—and where Bessie went with her—was not like the great schoolhouses they have now. It had but two rooms, one for girls and the other for boys. Some of the school windows opened on the street, and one morning when all was quiet in the schoolroom an organ-grinder suddenly began to play under the open windows.
The girls looked up from their books and listened, the teacher looked annoyed, but thinking he would soon go on, she waited. The girls began to get restless; study was at an end; and at last when the grinder had played all his airs and begun again, the teacher went to the door to ask him to go. In the hall she met the teacher of the boys, who was on the same errand, for the boys were all excited and getting very noisy. In fact school work was stopped in both rooms.
The man refused to move on, and at last gave as his excuse, that he had been hired by one of the scholars to play there an hour.
The teachers tried to make him tell who had hired him, and finally he said it was a small boy with red hair. Finding him determined to earn his money by playing the whole hour, the teachers went back to their rooms, sure that they knew the culprit and that he should be punished.