THE DEAD SNAKE
A little girl in a checked gingham dress was at the end of the line of
children who marched out from the room across the hall, and, obedient
to a look from Miss Mason, Meg followed her. Down the corridor, up
three steps and into a round, light room they marched, the piano
tinkling steadily. Meg saw now that it was on the platform, and,
goodness! the player was a small girl who didn't look much older than
Meg herself.
"Do you take music lessons?" whispered a girl next to Meg, as they
turned down a row of seats facing the platform and other children
rapidly filled up the rows back of them. "You do? Well, when you get
in the third grade you'll have to play for 'em to march. Miss Wright
makes all the third and fourth graders who can play anything learn an
assembly march."
Meg was glad that she was only in the first grade, and yet she thought
that it must be exciting to sit at a piano away up on a high
platform and play for the whole school. She wondered if, by practicing
faithfully, she could learn an assembly march by the time she reached
the third grade.
The girl at the piano played a crashing chord, and the children
dropped into their seats with a concerted fervor that shook the walls.
Miss Wright, the gray-haired vice-principal Meg had seen in her room
talking to Miss Mason, opened the large Bible that lay on the desk,
and, facing the children, read a few verses. Then the little piano
girl played for the hymn they sang, finding the books in racks on the
backs of the seats. Next Miss Wright made them a little speech, in
which she said she hoped they were all rested from the long vacation
and would work hard so that every one might be promoted at the end of
the term.
"She always says that," whispered the girl next to Meg.
"How do you know?" asked Meg, whispering, too.
"Why, I've been to school for most three years," said the other girl
proudly. "You first grade? Do you have Miss Mason or Miss Watts? Miss
Mason! Oh, gee, she's as cross as anything. I had her my first year."
Meg opened her mouth to say that she liked Miss Mason, but the bell
rang again and the children rose and turned toward the aisles. The
small girl at the piano rattled another lively march, and in orderly
lines the children marched back to their classrooms. Assembly was over
for that morning.
"Just a minute, before we begin our writing lesson," announced Miss
Mason when, with some noise and fluttering, her classes had found
their seats. "I believe in trusting my pupils to a great extent; I can
not watch you every minute. Besides, you know as well as I do when you
do wrong. I want to know how many of you whispered in the auditorium
this morning. Raise your hands, please."
Poor Meg's eyes widened in horror. For a moment she was furious at the
girl who had spoken to her and so tempted her to whisper. But if Meg
was only six years old she was an honest little girl and she knew
that in any case she might have whispered. The third-grade girl was
probably trying to be friendly, too.
Meg raised her hand. There were half a dozen other hands in the air.
"Tim Roon and Charlie Black. I might have known you would talk," said
Miss Mason severely. "I remember you last term. You may each stay
after school this afternoon for twenty minutes. You, too, Alice Cray.
I'm surprised at you. And Margaret Blossom--a first-grader, whispering
her very first morning. Don't you know it is against the rules to
whisper in assembly, Margaret?"
Meg hesitated.
"Stand when you speak," said Miss Mason, who certainly was rather
severe in her manner. "Did you or didn't you know you were breaking
the rules?"
"I--I--didn't think about the rules," stammered Meg, rising and
holding on to her desk with both small hands. "But I didn't know you
were going to ask us if we whispered!"
Miss Mason's eyes suddenly crinkled. She was laughing! When she
laughed you saw that she really wasn't cross.
"Very well," she said, "we'll forgive you this time. But I will ask
this question every morning, so don't whisper again unless you are
prepared to take the consequences. Now first-graders, take your copy
books."
Meg found her copy book already on her desk, and she was so interested
in trying to make a page of letters that would look exactly like those
already drawn on the top line that she never looked up when the second
grade had their arithmetic lesson at the blackboard. And when the bell
rang for recess, she jumped.
"Now don't stay in here, go down and out into the fresh air," directed
Miss Mason, busily putting up all the windows as high as they would
go. "Out with you, every one!"
It was warm and sunny on the playground, and Meg was soon drawn into a
game of jack-stones with Nina Mills and a little girl from her own
class. Bobby wandered off to a corner where a group of boys were
gathered.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were bending over something on the ground.
"Don't be mean," a boy just back of them said as Bobby came up.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black were chums and older than the majority of
children in Miss Mason's room. They had taken two years for the first
grade, and gave every evidence of spending two years in the second
grade. It wasn't that they found their lessons difficult, but rather
that they didn't try, and sometimes it almost seemed that they
preferred to be bad. They played hooky, and broke all the rules they
could, and when they were in school idled their time away, played
tricks on the other boys, or else spent hours in the office of the
vice-principal awaiting the attention of Mr. Carter, the real
principal, of whom even Tim Roon was secretly afraid.
"You keep out of this," said Tim rudely, as Bobby tried to look over
his shoulder.
But Bobby had already seen, and with a quick shove of his foot he
kicked away a stone. A small green snake glided rapidly off into the
grass. Another snake, mashed and dead, lay in the dust.
"You keep your hands off my things!" shouted Tim Roon. "I got that
snake, and if you think you can go round interfering----"
"Like as not you'll be bit when that snake grows up; and it'll serve
you right, too," chimed in Charlie Black, who had red hair and
freckles oddly at variance with his name.
Bobby was angry, too, and his small face was as red as the old
turkey's that lived at Brookside Farm.
"If you want to kill a snake, you don't have to mash it and hurt it,"
he told Tim heatedly. "You like to kill things. Water snakes are
harmless--Sam Layton says so. You cut up that other snake 'fore you
killed it; and you let me find you doing that to a live snake, or
anything else that can feel, and I'll, I'll----"
The bell rang then and Bobby didn't have time to say what he would do.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black walked off toward the school building
ignoring Bobby, and the other boys followed, looking a little ashamed.
They had watched Tim torture the snake without thinking much about
it. If a snake had feelings they had never considered them. And yet
they did not mean to be cruel.
Bobby stayed to bury the dead snake. This made him late, and Miss
Mason scolded him roundly. Bobby took his seat wishing that he could
get even with Tim Roon. That is not a sensible feeling for any one to
have, and it never yet made the boy or girl, or grown-up for that
matter, who had it, either happy or comfortable.
"I know it is a warm afternoon, and I suppose you find it hard to
settle down to work after a summer of play," said Miss Mason, suddenly
looking up from the list of spelling words she was dictating to the
second grade that afternoon, "but I do not see any excuse for this
incessant noise. James Willard, what have you in that bag?"
"Nothing," answered James stolidly.
"Nothing! Nonsense, you couldn't be rattling an empty bag," snapped
Miss Mason. "Bring it to me instantly."
James tramped heavily up the aisle and handed the teacher the bag. It
was empty.
"Then you've eaten the candy," said Miss Mason suspiciously. "You may
stay after school and fill all the inkwells. Now go to your seat."
Meg watched James as he took his seat. While he had been at the desk
she had seen Charlie Black lean over--he sat directly behind
James--and take something from James' seat. It was a large lump of
yellow taffy.
"He can't eat it," thought Meg. "He'll have to wait till after school.
Poor James won't dare say a word."
And James didn't. When he found his candy gone he looked around at
Charlie and scowled, for he guessed Charlie had stolen it, but he did
not dare complain. Charlie grinned pleasantly at him.
"Charles Black, go to the board," directed Miss Mason half an
hour later. "We have just time to go over to-morrow's lesson in
multiplication. Take the figures I give you."
Miss Mason looked impatiently at Charlie. He remained in his seat.
"I can't go," he objected when she continued to stare at him. "Can't I
do it from here?"
"Certainly not. Go to the board this instant," retorted Miss Mason.
"Charles, do you hear me?"
"I tell you, I can't go," wailed Charlie Black. "I--I won't go!"
Meg gasped. Even Miss Mason looked surprised.
Then she walked over to the door and opened it.
"You may go down to the principal's office," she said coldly. "No boy
can remain in my room who refuses to obey me."
Charlie's face was red, and he refused to meet the teacher's eyes.
"I tell you I can't go," he muttered again.