ly daunted when they learned that a barrier,
known as "zamnation," was to be stretched between them and the "'moted"
state. "Zamnation," when first Miss Bailey pronounced it, caused
something akin to panic in Room 18. It differed in no perceptible degree
from a word which they all understood to be _taboo_ ever since Ikey
Borrachsohn had addressed it, in the heat of argument, to a classmate.
In the lower grades an examination does not greatly differ from an
ordinary recitation, and so the First Readers, protected from stage
fright by complete ignorance of what they were undergoing, passed the
ordeal in triumph, and fell out at the other side victorious almost to a
man, and First Readers never more.

There came an afternoon when Miss Bailey, somewhat huskily, explained
this to them. "Zamnation" was over. The fair pages of the Second Readers
lay before them. In the morning they would be promoted. She was very
proud of them. One or two children had not worked quite hard enough.
They would have to try again, but the rank and file had achieved
promotion, and she hoped they would be very happy, and they were to
remember that she would always and ever be glad to see them, and glad to
hear that they were good.

The children who had taken their examinations so blandly, took their
promotion in quite a different spirit. Miss Bailey, laboring as best she
could with fifty little new-comers, could not be unaware of the
disturbance--almost the tumult--on the other side of the wall. When
ten-thirty brought the recess hour and she went down to the yard with
her new responsibilities, the tumult met her there.

"I don't likes it, und I don't needs that 'motion," cried Sarah
Schodsky; "I likes I shall be by your room."

"But you can't, honey. You're too big," said Miss Bailey. "You just stop
crying for your lost youth and try to make the best of Room 19."

"But we don't likes that room," cried Morris Mowgelewsky, ex-monitor of
Miss Bailey's Gold Fish Bowl. "It don't stands no fish theaytre in it
nor no flowers. Nathan Spiderwitz, he has awful mads over it" (Nathan
Spiderwitz had been Monitor of Miss Bailey's window-boxes), "und Patrick
Brennan says maybe his papa could to arrest Missis Blake. She says cheek
on him. She calls him Irisher."

"Oh, no!" remonstrated Miss Bailey.

"Teacher, yiss ma'am, she says cheek," Morris maintained. "She says
cheek on all of us; she says we is Bailey's Babies. She says it on Miss
Rosen. Me und Natha