Bailey's entrance, punctual and parcel-laden, in a festive frilly frock and a flowery hat, caused something almost like silence to fall upon the scene of the coming tournament. Eva Gonorowsky clasped Teacher's unoccupied hand, Sarah Schodsky and Yetta Aaronsohn relieved her of her bundles. Sadie Gonorowsky gesticulated madly from the place upon the sofa which she was reserving with all the expanse of her outspread skirt.

Teacher approached the grand stand and took her place. The feminine First Readers swarmed upon the soap boxes. But neither leg nor arm nor even eye was moved by the seven masculine First Readers drawn up in the centre of the yard. Flags waved in such profusion and such uniformity that even Miss Bailey's obligation to her hosts could not blind her to the fact that she had at last found the fifty-two American flags pasted together by the First Reader Class when Washington's Birthday was in the air and the offing. Two weeks ago she had missed them out of the cupboard, and neither janitor nor Monitor could give her tidings of them. They looked very well, she was forced to admit, dangling from high fence and clothes line. And very bright and joyant was the whole scene. The little girls in their bright colors. The sky so blue. Mrs. Brennan's pear tree in sturdy bloom. All was brilliant with a sense of Spring save the seven dark-clothed figures in the centre of the yard.

"Can you guess what kind from party it is?" shrieked Sadie Gonorowsky from the top of a tottering soap box to which she had withdrawn.

"Why, it's—" Teacher began, recognizing some elements of the scene, but made uncertain by the seven dark little figures, "of course it's——"

"It's 'Games in Gardens,'" shouted the little girls, waving their flags like mad and "scupping" so energetically that two disappeared, "it's Games in Gardens, und you're goin' to have a s'prise."

One of the dark and silent figures found speech and motion.

"Set down an' shut up," commanded Patrick Brennan. "We're goin' to begin."

The shutting up would have been effected automatically by the next proceeding of the seven. They laid violent hands upon themselves and in an instant a flat little heap of dark clothes marked the centre of the yard, and Patrick Brennan, Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, Isidore Applebaum, Nathan Spiderwitz, Isidore Wishnewsky, Isaac Belchatosky, and Morris Mowgelewsky stood forth in costumes reported by Isaac Borrachsohn, sanctioned by Miss Bailey, and owned by members of the audience.

A moment of tense silence followed. Every eye sought Teacher, and Constance Bailey knew that upon her first word or look depended success or failure, pride or everlasting shame. There was no time to wonder how the mistake arose. No time to remember what she had said that could possibly have been interpreted to mean this. They were her gallant little knights doing her uncomprehended bidding, and trying—at what sacrifice she guessed—to pleasure their liege lady.

Again she had blundered. Again she had failed to quite bridge the distance. The wrong word lay somewhere back in her effort to undo Isaac Borrachsohn's mischief. And she had wrought mischief ten times worse. The most devoted of her charges stood there in the clear May sunshine; the funniest, most pathetic, most ridiculous little figures, with their thin little arms and legs and their long little necks: proud, embarrassed, wistful.

"My dear boys," she cried suddenly, "how fine you look! How beautiful and—and—clean you are," she went on a little bit at random. "And now we are going to have games, and the girls and I will cheer the winners."

"Be ye s'prised?" yelled Patrick in irrepressible pride.

"Dreadfully!" she answered. "Dreadfully, Patrick dear."

"Then we'll begin," answered the master of ceremonies. "One, git in yer places! Two, fer a show! Three, to make ready! And four to GO."

Upon his final word the "Games in Gardens" began. The two Isidores and Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein rushed madly round the yard. Patrick tried to urge the others to follow, but Morris had elected the long jump—and the long jump he would perform, all protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Nathan Spiderwitz grasped the clothes pole and vaulted with great accuracy into the left wing of the grand stand. Isaac Belchatosky had secured a dilapidated ball from an abandoned bowling-alley, and he "put the shot" in all directions to his own satisfaction and the audience's terror until run into and overturned by Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein.

Shrill cries went up from the audience. The two boys arose unhurt, but the feelings of Bertha Binderwitz and Eva Kidansky were not thereby soothed.

"I guess I gets killed off of my mamma," wailed Bertha when she saw that one whole side of Isaac Belchatosky was smeared with mud. And when Nathan Spiderwitz was reclaimed from the soap boxes, with a long piece of cambric ruffle trailing behind him, Sadie Gonorowsky fell into such an agony of apprehension that Miss Bailey felt called upon for a promise to repair the damage ere another sun should set. Meantime Patrick was not idle. Disdaining competition, he went through all the "events," one after another until the perspiration was thick upon his forehead, and Eva Gonorowsky was trembling with excitement.

"My mamma don't know," she informed Miss Bailey over and over again. But owing perhaps to her watchful care, perhaps to a natural aptitude for athletics, Patrick escaped unspotted and unscathed.

He turned hand-springs upon the heap of clothes. He stood upon his head upon the same rostrum until his eyes bulged, and Miss Bailey implored him to desist. He wrested the shot from Isidore Wishnewsky, a person of no spirit, and then he "put" it neatly into the waist line of its owner, who promptly sat back gasping.

"Don't you dast to set, Isidore Wishnewsky," shrilled Sarah Schodsky in a panic. "I guess you dunno what is polite for you. Sooner somebody lends you somethings it ain't polite you should set on it! Ain't it fierce how he makes, Missis Bailey?"

"It is a little rude," Miss Bailey admitted in a voice as unsteady as Isidore Wishnewsky.

"I never in my world seen how they all makes," said Yetta Aaronsohn, that authority on Hygiene and the Care of the Body. "They could to make themselves awful sicknesses over it—home sicknesses, even, und lay-on-the-bed sicknesses, und comes-the-doctor sicknesses."

"Oh, I hope not!" Teacher rallied the pessimistic Yetta, "though they certainly do seem to be getting very tired."

By this time the track team of the First Reader Class had exhausted itself and its repertoire, and came forward, hot but confident, for its laurels. There was something for each one, and for each a little word of special commendation. And if Teacher's voice was more tender, her eyes more gentle when Morris's turn came, she still was gentle and tender enough with all of them.