It was evident all through this recital that Eva Gonorowsky had a communication of a more important and confidential nature upon her conscientious little mind. When at last the other Monitors had scattered to their duties, and Room 18 was in a satisfactory stage midway 'twixt chaos and order, Eva drew Miss Bailey into the corner between the window and the bookcase.

"Nobody ain't told you all what Ikey says," she whispered, with much the same gusto as she had seen her elders display as they gathered close about the very heart of a scandal. "Everybody has fraids over telling you."

"Afraid!" repeated Miss Bailey in surprise, well knowing this to be the last feeling she inspired. "Afraid to tell me!"

"Teacher, yiss, ma'am. They has fraids. It's somethin' fierce what Ikey says. He says like that: all those mans what couldn't to catch nothings und couldn't to hit nothings. He says somethin' fierce over all those mans." And here Eva pressed her professionally soiled hand over her mouth and regarded Miss Bailey with scandalized eyes.

"Go on, dear," said Miss Bailey encouragingly. "If Isaac has told you and Morris and the others I might as well know it too."

Eva removed her hand. "Ikey Borrachsohn, he dun'no what is polite for him," she made reply. "He tells it on everybody—in the yard even, where the babies is—he tells it out. He needs he shall get hit off of somebody."

"Now you tell me," said Miss Bailey, "and I'll see about Isaac."

"He says," whispered Eva, "how all those mans they don't puts them on like mans mit suits und hats und pants und coats—no, ma'am, that ain't how they makes—they puts them on like ladies und like little girls. On'y," and Miss Bailey had to stoop to catch this last overwhelming sentence—"on'y they don't puts them on so much."

"Why of course not, Eva," answered Miss Bailey, repressing with stern effort an inclination to wild laughter. This repression she knew to be the corner-stone of the First Reader's faith in her. She never, openly, laughed at their little confidences. She was a serious-minded person, always ready to discuss a serious problem seriously. Quite gravely now she pointed out to Eva the difficulty of violent exertion in street attire.

"You yourself," she amplified, "take off your coat and hat when you come to school, and yet you only read and write a little, and do quiet things like that. Now these men and boys, dear, that Isaac Borrachsohn has been telling about were running and exercising just as hard as they could; you know how hot we sometimes get here when we only stand in our places and exercise our arms and legs."

Eva was impressed, but not yet quite convinced.

"It ain't," she insisted, a gentle last word, unanswerable, overwhelming, "it ain't hats und coats what Ikey Borrachsohn says them mens in Gardens takes off."

Misunderstandings of this sort are a natural part of the order of the day in class rooms such as Room 18, where children, alien to every American custom, and prejudiced by religion and precept against most of them, are undergoing their training in citizenship. Generations of muffling and swaddling were behind Eva's shocked little face. Her ancestors had not taken their recreation in running or rowing or swimming. And the scene at Madison Square Garden was as foreign to the First Readers' traditions as a warm afternoon in Athens during the age of Pericles would have been to a New England spinster. It was the sort of misunderstanding which must be faced instantly, and immediately after assembly on the next morning Miss Bailey faced it.

"Isaac Borrachsohn has told you all," she commenced pleasantly, marshalling the wavering eyes before her with her own, steady and clear, "of how he went to Madison Square Garden with his father and saw the games."

Isaac squirmed in his place.

"And he told you," she continued, "how he saw men and boys running races, and trying how far they could throw a big heavy hammer and a big iron ball. Isaac didn't quite understand what they were doing, but they were not trying to hit any one, and not trying to catch one another, and there was no thought at all of a fight. The boy who ran fastest got a prize, the boy who threw the hammer farthest got a prize. And there were a great many other prizes for jumping and all kinds of things. And," she continued, redoubling the concentration in her eyes, "did Isaac tell you how those boys were dressed?"

A gasp and a shiver swept through Room 18.

"Well, if he didn't, I will. They wore the very lightest clothes they could get. They wanted to be free and cool. They couldn't run fast or jump far with all their heavy every-day clothes on. Exercise makes people very warm, you know. It was a great help to those boys to be dressed in cool white clothes.

"I was at the games," she continued, "as I was telling some of the boys yesterday afternoon, and I enjoyed them ever so much. I was just wishing that you were all there too. The girls could have sat with me, and the boys could have run in the ring. I've watched you all playing in the yard, and I know what good runners some of you are. And then when they gave you prizes we, the girls and I, would have waved our flags and cheered just like the ladies Isaac told you about. Now wouldn't that be grand?" she cried, and the First Readers vociferously agreed with her, though Yetta Aaronsohn, the hypochondriacal, was still of the opinion that "wind on the legs ain't healthy for nobody."

Cold indeed would be the heart of any masculine First Reader who could see, unmoved, the picture conjured up of Teacher's words. They were well accustomed to impromptu races, run on a course all thick beset with push-carts, ash cans, and humanity. Other tests of physical strength, with the exception by an occasional hand-to-hand conflict, neither determined, scientific, nor conclusive, were practically unknown. But to run on a prepared course surrounded by a stationary and admiring audience, of which Miss Bailey and the feminine First Readers formed an important part, was quite a different thing. Then, too, "prizes" was an alluring word. Teacher had shown it to mean articles of price and great attractiveness. The "clean-hands-for-a-week" prize, won by Sadie Gonorowsky, with Isidore Applebaum as a close second, had been a little clasp pin of the American flag in enamel, and the "cleanest-shoes-for-a-month" prize had been a pair of roller skates.

The masculine element of the Room 18's Board of Monitors met that afternoon in the cellar of a recently burned tenement to discuss the situation. If it would pleasure Miss Bailey to see her adherents racing round a garden in abbreviated costumes, there was, they decided, no very serious reason against giving her that pleasure. It was only a shade more unreasonable than other desires of hers to which they had bent their energies, and since there was question of reward, it became even more a duty and a pleasure to oblige her.

"But we ain't got no Gardens," Nathan Spiderwitz pointed out.

"We'll use my yard," said Patrick. "When me mother has company she always calls our yard a garden. It's got a tree in it, and we can get some flags to hang on the clothes line. I was askin' me big brother last night, and he knows all about them games. He'll tell us mor'n Ikey Borrachsohn can about how the thing goes, and when we get it fixed just right, we'll have Miss Bailey and the girls come round some Saturday morning and see us run and jump. Say, it'll be great! I can run faster