thermometric hand, and
examining their valves, the janitor withdrew, and when Miss Bailey
reached Room 18 on the next morning, Becky Zabrowsky, as blue of lips
and fingers as of vesture, was waiting for her. And indeed her costume
gave cause for pity, even as her smile and her bravery gave cause for
tears. Besides the gingham dress referred to by the janitor, she wore a
pair of black and pink stockings, of mature growth and many holes,
flapping adult shoes with all the buttons gone, and a hair ribbon which
had begun life as a bandage. That was all. But she was clean. And her
self-respect made her seven years as high a barrier against patronage as
though they had been seventy. She was as proudly and as sensitively on
her guard as though she were an old marquise fallen upon evil days, and
obliged to give lessons in French or die, and who was restrained from
the bitter and pleasanter alternative only by religion.

Miss Bailey was accustomed to more normal children. As a rule her little
First Readers took all that was offered to them, and a good deal that
was not. Their consumption of Kindergarten materials--colored paper,
colored sticks, chalks, pencils, books--anything which could be cached
upon the human body--was colossal, and only an eagle eye and a large
corps of subsidized monitors kept the balance true between the number of
"young learners" and the number of readers. But this particular little
Becky had none of these taking ways. Had she been like other Beckies and
Rachels, Miss Bailey would have bought her a little shawl and a few
suits of underwear. With this particular Becky such a liberty was out of
the question. Teacher had encountered the Zabrowsky spirit once, and had
been defeated by it.

That had been upon the question of lunch. Teacher had noticed that Becky
frequently remained at school during the luncheon hour, but that she
never ate anything. Other little girls sometimes urged refreshment upon
her in vain. Miss Bailey, wise by this time in the laws of kosher and of
traff, the clean and the unclean, according to Mosaic dietary laws,
suggested a glass of milk at a neighboring dairy, or a roll from the
delicatessen shop across the street. Any one of her charges would starve
cheerfully to death or at the hospital ward before they would touch any
of her food. She was a Christian, and though they loved her, learned
from her, and honored her, they, like Shylock of old, would not eat with
her. And Becky Zabrow