A Son of the City | Page 9

subsided into the normal
undercurrent of whispering between the pupils. Pencils scratched
laboriously over rough manila pads as their owners copied the
questions from the board. The boy two seats ahead of John took a wad
of chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on the underside of his
desk. Someone over on Sid DuPree's side of the room dropped a book
to the floor with a bang.
Then Miss Brown shoved back the test papers she had been correcting
and glanced at the clock.
"Clear the desks," she ordered sharply. "Class prepare for physical
culture."
They obeyed with alacrity, for the drills were ever a relief from the
enforced inactivity of restless little bodies. Moreover, they were vastly
more enjoyable than mathematical perplexities or troublesome state and
river boundaries.
"Rise on toes, inhale deeply, and exhale ver-y slowly!" came the crisp
command after the children had stumbled to their feet in the aisle. "One,
two, three, four; one, two, three, four."
Heated little faces grew even more flushed as the minute hand of the
big wall clock showed the passing of five flying minutes. Next came,

"Thrust forward, upwards, and from your sides," "bend trunks," to all
points of the compass, "lunge to the right and left, and thrust forward,"
and a baker's dozen of other exercises designed to offset the weakening
influences of cramped city environments and impure air.
In conclusion, the class made a quarter-turn to the right and as they thus
stood in parallel rows, took hold of each other's hands. At teacher's
command, they swung their arms back and forth vigorously to an
accompaniment of the inevitable "one-two, one-two."
John's was a back seat, thanks to skillful maneuvering on the opening
day of school, and flaxen-haired Olga occupied the desk ahead. A day
earlier he had counted himself fortunate in having her for a neighbor,
for she was clever at studies which required plodding perseverance, and
not at all bashful about helping a fellow when teacher pounced on him
with a catch question.
Now he loathed her slow, insipid smile as his left hand released her
plump right fingers at the end of the exercise. If she were only the new
little girl!
Then he noticed, as a prosaic business man will notice suddenly, that a
skyscraper which he has passed daily for months is out of line with its
neighbor, that the seat behind the new little girl was unoccupied and
that she stood alone in the aisle during exercises. Would that he had
possession of it!
To sit next her, to be able to exchange the trivial, yet important, little
confidences in which fourth-graders indulge when teacher's back is
turned, or to win her quick, flashing smile as a reward for sharpening
her pencil or for judicious prompting during a spelling lesson!
To achieve these things, he would be willing even to relinquish the
powers which he held by virtue of his aisle end seat. And to allow
voluntarily some other pupil to fill the inkwells, distribute pencils,
scratch pads, and drawing paper at their appointed intervals, and to
indulge in a hundred and one other little acts of monitorship is no slight
sacrifice for a boy to make.

The geography lesson began. With the disregarded map of Africa in
front of him as a blind, he fell to comparing the new girl with the other
maidens of his acquaintance.
Take poor, inoffensive Olga for example. Her placid being seemed
clumsy and her movements bovine as he pictured again the dainty grace
of that new arrival as she stepped down from the teacher's platform; or
Irish-eyed, boisterous, fun-loving Margaret! John had regarded her with
a great deal of favor during the past two weeks, for she was a jolly little
sprite with a mother who, thanks to the neighborhood's laundry
patronage, contrived to clothe her daughter in a constantly varying and
seldom-fitting assortment of dresses. Now echoes of her noisy laughter
returned to grate upon his memory. The new little girl wouldn't laugh
like that. Not she! No one with so sweet a smile had need of impudent
grins. And what a contrast between Margaret's untidy mop and those
long, silken curls which so fascinated him.
Yes, the boy decided that here was the being who was to be his girl for
the ensuing year--to be worshipped from afar in all probability, but to
be, nevertheless, his girl. So he drove ruthlessly from his heart all
memories of a certain gray-eyed Harriette, his third-grade charmer, and
erected a purely tentative shrine to the new divinity. As yet he was not
quite certain of his feelings--and there might be a later addition to the
room!
In the meantime, there was the vacant seat. Temporary idol or not, he
longed for possession of it, but he