n, we hears how she says on her. 'What you think I
got?' she says on Miss Rosen, und Miss Rosen, she says, 'she don't
knows,' und Missis Blake, she says, 'I got a bunch of Bailey's Babies.'"

"Then you _must_ have been bad, Morris," Miss Bailey reproved him; "you
must have been behaving like babies."

"Teacher, no ma'am," Morris answered. "We don't make nothings like
that. She makes Eva Gonorowsky und Yetta Aaronsohn shall stand in
corners the whiles they cries. She says, 'What is mit them?' und they
says, 'They likes they shall look upon your face,' und extra she stands
them in corners. She is awful cross teachers! Und anyway, she's too
big."

Although Miss Bailey appreciated this tribute she could understand Miss
Blake's failure to do so, and she explained to Morris that, upon pain of
being instantly cast out from her heart of hearts, he must learn to love
Miss Blake.

But Morris had had a severe lesson in the perils of unrequited
affection, and at the age of seven had formulated the axiom, "It's a
foolishness you shall make what is lovin' mit somebody sooner somebody
don't makes what is lovin' mit you," and Miss Bailey found it difficult
to induce him to regard Miss Blake with affection.

Other members of the former cabinet and staff were equally refractory,
and at three o'clock every afternoon, save on the regrettably frequent
occasions when Miss Blake was obliged to require their continued
presence in Room 19, they flocked back to their old posts of duty. They
fell upon the window-boxes, the aquarium, the pencils, and the
blackboards with endearments and caresses, and they utterly swept away
and annihilated the slow-footed new-comers whom Miss Bailey was trying
to initiate in their duties. A clumsy boy named David Boskowitz had
succeeded to the portfolio of Gold Fishes. Now a gold fish, even of
eighteen-carat quality, is not warranted to endure the endearments and
refreshments lavished upon it by fifty emotional members of a race whose
ancestors once wandered to adoration of a Golden Calf. During Morris's
tenure of office Miss Bailey had frequently been obliged to renew his
charges. And some mysterious tragedy was played in the fish theatre one
night shortly after David Boskowitz took office. Morris, slipping into
Room 18 before school hours, to bestow a defunct carnation upon Teacher,
found a gold fish floating, wrong side up, among the seaweed in the
shining bowl.

With howls he pointed it out to Miss Bail