TOO MUCH NATURAL HISTORY
When the girls of the Eastshore school reached the seventh grade,
they entered the cooking class. The white aprons and caps were much
coveted and whatever other study might be neglected, each girl
usually put her best into the weekly cooking lesson. There was a
small stove for each and every young cook was responsible for the
order and cleanliness in which her pots and pans and utensils were
kept. Woe betide her, if Miss Parsons, the teacher, found an
unwashed pan thrust under the sink in a moment of hurry.
"She's very particular," reported Rosemary, the evening after her
first lesson in cooking. "She made Nina Edmonds take off her rings
and she scolded Elsie Mears because she put her hands up to her hair
just once, to tuck it back under her cap."
"And right she is," announced Winnie from the dining-room where she
was setting the table for breakfast. "A cook has got no business
wearing rings, and I can't abide a girl who is always fussing with
her hair when she is handling food."
"Winnie's a member of the sanitary squad," put in Doctor Hugh,
smiling behind his newspaper. It was one of the rare times when he
had an evening at home.
"Nina Edmonds makes me sick!" said Sarah vehemently. "She screamed
when I showed her a darling little spotted snake I found to-day."
Sarah and Shirley had brought out the box of dominoes and were
playing in the center of the floor. No amount of persuasion had ever
induced them to play on a table.
"Don't talk about snakes, dearie," pleaded Aunt Trudy, shuddering
over her knitting. "They are such ugly, horrid squirmy things."
"Oh, no they're not Aunt Trudy," said Sarah earnestly. "That's
because you're not used to them. Let me show you the one I've got in
my pocket--"
To her aunt's horror, Sarah unbuttoned the pocket of her middy
blouse and pulled out a little dangling dark object.
"Hugh!" shrieked Aunt Trudy, knocking over her chair as she rose
hastily. "Hugh make her stop! Ow! Rosemary, Winnie, take that awful
thing away, quick!"
In spite of her sympathy for Aunt Trudy who was white to the lips
with fright, Rosemary wanted to laugh, as Sarah, not realizing that
her aunt was really in terror, and intent only on winning
understanding for her snake, continued to advance on the unhappy
lady, the spotted snake dangling from her hand.
"Sarah!" Doctor Hugh managed to halt the march of his determined
small sister. "Sarah, take that snake away at once. At once, do you
hear me? Aunt Trudy is afraid of snakes."
"Well, she wouldn't be, if she knew about 'em," insisted Sarah. "I
only want to show her."
"You can't show her--lots of people are frightened by the sight of
snakes," replied the doctor. "Take your snake out of the room this
minute."
Still Sarah lingered.
"It's dead," she offered humbly. "A dead snake won't hurt Aunt Trudy
will it?"
Doctor Hugh caught Rosemary's eye, and they went off into peals of
laughter while poor Aunt Trudy wept and Shirley implored Rosemary to
tell her what was "funny."
"Take your snake away and bury it, Sarah," said the doctor, when he
could speak.
"And don't try to educate your relatives and friends to recognize
the virtues of the reptile family; a person either likes snakes or
can't abide 'em, and you and Aunt Trudy will never agree on that
subject."
"I think you ought to forbid her to ever touch one, or carry one
around with her," said Aunt Trudy when Sarah had gone out of the
room sorrowfully to borrow a match box from Winnie to serve as a
snake-coffin. "The idea of having a snake in one's pocket!"
"You can't separate Sarah and animals," returned Sarah's brother
with conviction. "No use trying, Aunt Trudy. All this summer she was
crazy on the subject of rabbits and cats and now she seems to have
switched to snakes. About all we can do is to keep her within
reasonable bounds and trust to luck that before the winter is over
she will take up canary birds or something equally pleasing."
Aunt Trudy did not know Sarah's teacher, Miss Ames, but if she had
they would have found a common bond of sympathy and interest in
their horror of snakes and other unpleasant forms of animal life to
which Sarah was devoted. Eleanor Ames was a nervous young woman and
she found it distinctly trying to be obliged to divide the
interests of her class with a shoe-box of baby mice, or to soothe
the ruffled feelings of timid little girls who had seen the bright
eyes and wriggling slim body of a live snake peeping out of Sarah
Willis' coat in the cloak room. Punishment seemed to have no effect
on the culprit who stayed after school and cleaned blackboards with
disconcerting cheerfulness and Miss Ames was considering the
advisability of sending Sarah home with a note asking the
co-operation of Doctor Hugh's authority, when something happened
that took the matter out of her hands.
Late in October, one frosty morning on her way to school, Sarah made
what was to her a great and lucky discovery. Shirley and Rosemary
had gone on ahead of her, but Winnie had called her back to pick up
the clothes she had strewn about her room with her customary
careless abandon. Since the opening of school, Aunt Trudy had
patiently made beds and put the rooms in order and she would never
mention to her favorite Sarah a little matter like slippers in the
middle of the rug, bath-robe flung down on the bed and every
separate bureau drawer wide open and yawning. This morning Aunt
Trudy was going to the city to shop, and the task of bed-making
would devolve upon Winnie who had no intention of having her duty
complicated by others' neglect. A hasty glance into the room shared
by Sarah and Shirley, and Winnie had summoned the former, in no
uncertain voice, to "come up here and put your clothes away this
instant." Sarah, complaining that she would certainly be late for
school, had obeyed and if she had hurried could easily have reached
the school before the assembly bell rang.
But crossing a vacant lot, Sarah came upon that which could make her
forget school and time. A faint rustle under the dead leaves caught
her quick ear and, stooping down, she uncovered a little snake,
languid from the cold. Perhaps he had been on his way to winter
quarters and the frost had caught him unaware. Anyway, he was numb
and Sarah, murmuring affectionate nothings to him, slipped him into
her pocket and then spent a valuable ten minutes poking about among
the leaves in the hopes of discovering another, believing implicitly
that snakes "always go in pairs." However, if the snake had a
companion, diligent search failed to uncover it and Sarah was forced
to take her reluctant way to school with only one snake to comfort
and love. While she was still some distance from the gate she heard
the bell ring, and as she reasoned, she was late then, so why should
she hurry when it would not save her a tardy mark? Morning exercises
were in progress in the auditorium when Sarah entered the building,
and she had her class room to herself. She hung up her hat and coat
and took another peep at the snake. He seemed to be feeling better,
but some fresh wave of sympathy led her to regret the necessity for
leaving him to spend a lonely morning in the cloak room. With Sarah
to think was to act, and she popped the snake into the pocket of her
middy blouse, pinning it with a safety pin in lieu of a button and
button hole. When the class returned from the auditorium, she was
sitting sedately in her seat and appeared only mildly interested in
the lecture on tardiness which followed.
"We'll have the papers distributed on which you worked during the
last drawing lesson," announced Miss Ames unexpectedly. "The drawing
supervisor will be around next week and we are a lesson or two late,
here in our room. Instead of spelling this morning, I'll have you
paint the leaves you drew. George Wright, you distribute the papers
and Sarah Willis, you know where the paint boxes are."
Sarah was monitor for the drawing materials and she went up and down
the aisles, giving each pupil a small paint box and two brushes,
while George Wright gave out the papers on which the pencil sketches
of autumn leaves had been drawn.
The warmth of the pocket evidently revived the chilled snake and, as
Sarah was bending over the desk of Annabel Warde, a dainty little
girl about her own age, a lithe green body shot from out Sarah's
blouse, wriggled across the desk and dropped to the floor. The
safety pin had left too large a loop-hole.
"A snake!" screamed Annabel, flinging her box of paints in one
direction and the brushes Sarah had just given her, in the other. "I
saw it! I saw it! Miss Ames, I saw a snake, and it's right here in
this room. It'll bite us, I know it will and we'll die! Catch it,
somebody, Oh, please hurry!"
Jumping up and down and shrieking, Annabel was beside herself with
fright. Several other little girls began to scream, too, and the
boys rushed around the room shouting that they would catch it and
kill it, whatever "it" might be. None of them thought that Annabel
had really seen a snake.
"Don't hurt it!" warned Sarah, down on her hands and knees and
hunting under the desks for her lost pet. "This kind of snake won't
bite any one, and you mustn't hurt it. I want to keep it all winter
and watch it grow."
Miss Ames was trying to calm Annabel who persisted in sitting on top
of her desk with her feet curled under her, apparently under the
delusion that a snake always attacks the ankles first, when George
Wright whooped triumphantly.
"I see it--gee, it really is a snake!" he shouted. "Look out, Peter,
let me shy this paper-weight at him--there, I'll bet that mashed him
into jelly!"
There was a crash as the heavy paper-weight struck the floor and
then a small whirlwind landed on the astonished George.
"How dare you try to kill my snake!" panted Sarah, crying with rage.
"He never did anything to you! You're a great, cruel, cowardly boy,
that's what you are!"
She was pummeling George unmercifully and he retaliated with
interest, forgetting in the excitement and confusion that his
antagonist was a girl. But while snakes might temporarily cow Miss
Ames, a fight in her room was a situation she knew how to deal
with.
"George! Sarah!" she descended upon the combatants and pulled them
apart with no gentle hand. "I'm ashamed of you! What can you be
thinking of! George, you must know better than to strike a girl, and
Sarah, what would your mother say if she knew you were fighting with
a boy? Why I never heard of such a thing--never!" and Miss Ames
looked as though she never had.
Sarah darted over to the space behind the atlas table where George
had thrown the paper weight. She lifted the glass cube and picked up
the little mashed object under it.
"He's killed it!" she sobbed. "He went and killed my little snake!"
Miss Ames lost her patience which is not to be wondered at,
considering the trying half hour she had endured.
"Sarah Willis you march down to the principal's office," she said
severely. "And throw that disgusting object in the trash can on your
way down. Don't you ever bring another snake, alive or dead, into
this room as long as I am the teacher. I want you to tell Mr. Oliver
exactly what has occurred here this morning and be sure you explain
to him that you fought George simply because he killed that wretched
reptile."
Sarah's heart beat uncomfortably fast as she walked down the broad
stone steps to the first floor where the principal's office was.
Her class room was on the third floor. On the second floor she
stopped and wrapped the dead snake in her handkerchief--for a
wonder she had one--and when she reached the first floor she
studied the pictures hung in the corridor with minutest care.
For once in her short life Sarah was anxious to have time to
stand still. Usually exasperatingly indifferent to rebuke or
reproval, Miss Ames had hit upon the one punishment that Sarah
could be fairly said to dread--an interview with the principal.
She approached the glass door marked "office" slowly. The door was
closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been
"sent to the office," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever
thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad
enough to need an interview with the principal was always expelled.
Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said
she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly--no one in
the Willis family had even been expelled from school, Sarah was
quite sure.
Did you knock, or did you go right in? Was the principal always
there? Perhaps he might be away for the day--Sarah devoutly hoped he
would be. She shut her eyes tightly, took a firmer grip on the
handkerchief containing the dead snake, and knocked on the glass
panel.
"Come in," called a pleasant voice, a woman's voice.
Sarah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a large, sunny room
with a desk in the center, and a smaller desk over by the window
where a young woman was typing busily.
"Mr. Oliver isn't in, is he?" said Sarah speaking at a gallop. A
swift glance had shown her that the young woman was the only person
in the room.
"Just go right into the next office, and you'll find him," said Mr.
Oliver's secretary, smiling.