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Page 52
The child's face lighted with a happy smile.
"Oh, then, I don't want to go THIS year!" she cried, "I'll stay at home,
as mama said, and keep school with my dolls and the kittens, but will
you come sometimes, and see if I teach them right?"
"I certainly will," Miss Sterling said, kindly, "and I do hope your
little class will behave nicely."
"The dolls will," said Dollie, hopefully, "but the kittens' manners
are--awful!"
"Then that shows how much they need a teacher," Miss Sterling said, and
Dollie felt sure that it must be right for her to remain at home, that
those kittens might not be neglected.
"They run away 'thout asking to be s'cused, and they walk right into the
saucer of milk. I don't s'pect them to use spoons, but they needn't sit
down in it. How'd I look, if I sat down in MY plate when I was eating?"
There was no one near to answer her question, and the little girl
hurried home, convinced that there must be no delay in educating the
kittens.
There was one small person in the town who feared the opening of school,
and that was Gyp.
During vacation days he was care free, but as it neared the time when
all the children of Avondale would be, for the greater part of the day,
in school, he began to watch any person who passed the shanty that he
called "home," and to view with terror the blue coat of a policeman.
"They shan't ketch me!" he muttered, "I WON'T go to school!"
His mother, as ignorant as himself, enjoyed using him as a wood
gatherer, and thus insisted that he was not old enough to go to school,
when questioned by a member of the school committee.
"Not OLD enough!" cried the man in disgust, "why, woman, any child five
years old can go to school."
"Gyp ain't five yet!" the woman had answered, stolidly.
"It's no use talking that way," was the quick reply, "he's NINE if he's
a day. I think it's more likely that he's ten. Ye can't keep a child out
of school unless he's less'n five, or over fourteen."
"Then he's OVER fourteen!" cried the woman.
"Less'n five one minute, and over fourteen the next!" said the man in
disgust. "Grows kinder fast, don't he?"
"Well, he AIN'T goin' ter school!" the woman insisted, and the officer
went his way.
Gyp, however, did not believe that he would long remain away from the
shanty.
He determined to take no chances, and it seemed to him that the safest
thing for him to do, was to keep well away from home.
At twilight he surprised his family by appearing with a huge bundle of
fagots that he had gathered in the woods. He gave them yet another
surprise by packing the wood upon the old wood pile behind the house,
and running off again for more.
He returned with a larger bundle than the first.
"Kind 'o busy, ain't yer?" questioned his mother, but Gyp made no reply.
She watched him, as he hastily piled the wood.
It certainly was unusual to see the boy work like that!
When asked to do a task, it was Gyp's habit to do it as slowly as
possible, and to do as little as he dared.
Now, without waiting to be asked, he was working as if he had not a
moment to spare!
Yet more amazing, on the next day, before any of his family was
stirring, he was again at work, and soon a huge heap of fagots rose in
the little back yard.
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