MICKEY GAFFNEY
Brother and Sister were very fond of playing school. They carefully
saved all the old pencils and scraps of paper and half-used blank books
that Grace and Louise and Jimmie gave them, and many mornings they
spent on the porch "going to school."
Neither had ever been to school, and of course they were excited at the
prospect of starting in the fall. Brother had had kindergarten lessons
at home and he was ready for the first grade, while Sister would have
to make her start in the Ridgeway school kindergarten.
"I wish summer would hurry up and go," complained Brother one August
day. "Then we could really go to school."
"Well, don't wish that," advised Louise. "Goodness knows you'll be
tired of it soon enough! Sister, what are you dragging out here?"
"My blackboard," answered Sister, almost falling over the doorsill as
she pulled her blackboard--a gift from Grandmother Hastings--out onto
the porch.
"Come on, Grace, we'll go in," proposed Louise, hastily gathering up
her work. "If these children are going to play school there won't be
any place for us! We'll go up to my room."
"I thought maybe you would be the scholars," said Brother,
disappointed. "We never have enough scholars."
Louise was halfway up the stairs.
"You can play the dolls are scholars," she called back.
Mother Morrison had gone over to Grandmother Hastings to help her make
blackberry jam, and Louise and Grace had been left in charge of the
house.
"Let me be the teacher," begged Sister, when her blackboard was
arranged to her liking. "I know how, Roddy."
"Well, all right, you can be teacher first," agreed Brother. "But after
you play, then it's my turn."
Sister picked up a book and pointed to the blackboard.
"'Rithmetic class, go to the board," she commanded.
Both she and Brother knew a good deal about what went on in classrooms,
because they had listened to the older children recite.
"How much is sixty-eight times ninety-two?" asked Teacher-Sister
importantly.
Brother made several marks on the blackboard with the crayon.
"Nine hundred," he answered doubtfully.
"Correct," said the teacher kindly. "Now I'll hear the class in
spellin'."
"I wish we had more scholars," complained Brother. "It's no fun with
just one; I have to be everything."
"There's that little boy again--maybe he'd play," suggested Sister,
pointing to the red-haired, barefooted little boy who stood staring on
the walk that led up to the porch.
He could not see through the screens very clearly, but he had heard the
voices of the children and, stopping to listen, had drawn nearer and
nearer.
"That's Mickey Gaffney," whispered Brother. "Hello, Mickey," he called
more loudly. "Want to come play school with us?"
Mickey came up on the steps, and flattened his nose against the screen
door.
"I dunno," he said doubtfully. "How do you play?"
Sister pushed open the door for him, and Mickey rather shyly looked
about him.
"It's nice and shady in here," he said appreciatively. "You got a
blackboard, ain't you?"
"You should say 'have' a blackboard and 'ain't' is dreadful," corrected
Sister, blissfully unaware that "dreadful" was not a good word to use.
"You can use the chalk if you'll be a scholar, Mickey."
Mickey was anxious to draw on the blackboard and he consented to play
"just for a little."
As Brother had said, two scholars were ever so much better than one and
they had a beautiful time playing together. Mickey, in spite of his
ragged clothes, and bad grammar, knew how to play, and he suggested
several new things that Sister and Brother had never done.
"I been to school," boasted Mickey.
The children were anxious to have him stay to lunch with them and
Louise, who had heard his voice and who came downstairs to see him,
also invited him to stay. But he was too shy, and shuffled off just as
Nellie Yarrow bounded up the front steps.
"Wasn't that Mickey Gaffney?" she asked curiously. "I shouldn't think
you'd want to play with him. His folks are awful poor, and, besides,
his father was arrested last year."
"Mickey isn't to blame for that," retorted Grace quickly. "Don't be a
snob, Nellie; Brother and Sister had a good time playing with that
little red-headed boy."
"But hardly any of the children play with him," persisted Nellie, who
of course went to the public school. "You see last term Mickey was in
my room, and he only came till about the middle of October--maybe it
was November. Anyway, soon as it got cold he stopped coming.
"The teacher thought he was playing hooky, and she told Mr. Alexander,
the principal. And he found out that the reason Mickey didn't come to
school was 'cause his father didn't send him."
"Why didn't his father send him?" asked Sister.
"He wouldn't work, and Mickey didn't have any shoes to wear," explained
Nellie. "Mr. Alexander got somebody to give Mickey a pair of shoes, but
he wouldn't pay any attention to his lessons, and I know he wasn't
promoted. I suppose he'll be in the first grade again this year."
Brother and Sister thought a good deal about Mickey after Nellie had
gone home. They wondered if he wanted to go to school and whether he
wished the summer would hurry so the new term might open.
"He liked to play school, so I guess he likes to go, really," argued
Sister. "Playing is different," said Brother wisely. "He didn't have
any shoes on this morning, did he?"
"No, that's so," Sister recalled. "And his clothes were all torn and
dirty; maybe he hasn't any new suit to wear the first day."
All the Morrison children had always started school in new suits or
dresses, and Mother Morrison had promised Brother a new sailor suit and
Sister a gingham frock when they started off in September.
"Miss Putnam would say he 'scuffled,'" giggled Sister, remembering that
was what Miss Putnam thought all children did with their feet.
"I wonder who really did put the tar on her porch?" murmured Brother.
"She'll always think we did it, unless someone tells her something
else."