Читать книгу Mary Jane at School - Clara Ingram Judson - Страница 3

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“BURR-RR-RR! Burr-rr-rr! Burr-rr-rr!”

Silence.

“Burr-rr-rr! Burr-rr-rr! Burr-rr-rr!”

Mary Jane sleepily rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed.

Whatever could be happening?

“Burr-rr-rr!”

“Mary Jane! Shut it off! Press the slide at the back as I told you to,” called her mother’s voice from the next room.

Instantly Mary Jane remembered. They weren’t out in the country any more. That was the reason why she couldn’t see trees and sky and squirrels when she sat up to look around. They were back in the city and this was the day school was to begin. And she had been so very afraid that the family would oversleep (though they never had) that she persuaded her mother to let her take the alarm clock to bed with her.

She grabbed it up, thrust it under the pillow to subdue it somewhat and then, with quick fingers, slid the little slide and shut off the noise. And Alice was still sleeping soundly. Just imagine sleeping with that noise going on in your very room!

Mary Jane slipped out of bed, pounced on her sister and gave her a shake.

“Alice! Alice! Wake up, sleepy head!” she shouted. “Don’t you remember this is the day to go to school?”

“Umm-m-m,” mumbled Alice, turning over. Then she opened her eyes and remembered. And immediately she was wide awake. Of course! School!

So much had happened since the two Merrill girls had been in school that they had almost forgotten what it would be like.

First there was their trip east with the graduation festivities at Harvard and all the fun at the beach and visiting old historic places. The girls had loved that. Then, hardly had they reached home, before the family moved out to their brand new little summer home in the woods some twenty-five miles outside of Chicago. And in the fun and out-of-door work and play, both had grown strong and brown as Indians. They ought to be strong and well for their winter’s work. But it certainly would seem queer to have to sit still at desks and to be indoors so much. No doubt about that!

“How do you s’pose my teacher will be?” wondered Mary Jane as she picked up her clothes ready to go to the bathroom for her morning tub. “I’ll be sorry to be out of Miss Treavor’s room, I will. But of course I passed.”

“Well, they’re all pretty nice, I think,” said Alice philosophically, “and you have to have the one that’s there, so no use worrying.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” said Mary Jane, “I was wondering. And when a person wonders they just wonder, they can’t help it a bit.”

By the time she was through her tub, Alice was ready for hers, so there was no more time for talk till they met in the kitchen. Alice’s morning task was to fix the fruit while Mary Jane filled the glasses with water, carried in the cream, and saw to it that the sugar bowl was full.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Mary Jane, as she scooped out the last, the very last scrap of melon she could find in her half portion, “I don’t believe I want to go to school after all. I don’t want to sit still and I don’t want to be a grade below Betty, and I think I’d rather stay home and help you, mother.”

“Why, Mary Jane,” laughed Mrs. Merrill, “aren’t you a funny little girl! Maybe you’ll catch up with Betty some day. And, anyway, whether you are up with her or not, I’m sure you want to go and do what the other children want to. You’ll——”

A call from out-of-doors interrupted.

“Mary Jane! Mary Jane! Mary Jane Merrill! Are you home?” It was Betty’s voice, and she was calling from the yard just below the dining-room windows in the Merrill apartment.

Instantly all Mary Jane’s troubles were forgotten and with a hurried, “Will you please excuse me, mother,” she slid out of her chair and hurried to the little balcony overlooking the Holden yard.

“Hello, Betty,” she called, “ready for school?”

“Yes, and I’ve a new dress to wear,” announced Betty.

“So’ve I,” replied Mary Jane; “anyway I have a new dress and I guess mother will let me wear it.”

“Well, you’d better hurry up,” announced Betty, “’cause it’s almost eight now and I’m going in ten minutes so as to play in the yard. They have a new teeter—I saw it.”

Betty danced along toward her house and Mary Jane dashed indoors.

“Betty has a new dress and she’s going to wear it to school,” she cried to her mother. “And please, mother, can I hurry and do my work so as to go with Betty, and please may I wear my new dress, too—that blue one with cross-stitch butterflies on it—mother, please may I?”

“But I thought you didn’t want to go to school?” asked Mrs. Merrill, as though much puzzled.

“Why, mother!” exclaimed Mary Jane in amazement. “Of course I want to go to school! Who ever heard of a little girl who didn’t want to go to school? Why, mother!”

“Well,” laughed Mrs. Merrill, “I guess I must have been mistaken. And you may wear your new dress if you are careful in the playground.”

“Goody!” cried Mary Jane happily, “you’re the bestest mother ever was. Now I’ll do my work quick fast.”

She started clearing off the table so swiftly that Mrs. Merrill feared for the safety of her cups and saucers. It isn’t so comfortable when one hears favorite cups dancing gay little jigs on the saucers as they are carried from dining-room to kitchen, as most folks know.

“I’ll tell you what to do, Mary Jane,” she suggested. “Seeing it’s the first morning and you want to get there early to play, you pick up your room and see that the waste-baskets are empty, and the pillows and papers in the living-room are picked up, and then you may change your dress and skip along. I have unpacking and so many odds and ends to do this morning, I won’t mind doing a little more and tending to the breakfast work myself. So skip along, dear.”

Mary Jane needed no second bidding. She hurried into her room, tidied it up the best she knew, then looked in the living-room waste-baskets—not a thing there—goody—that was because they had just got home, of course. Then she gave the pillows on the davenport a punch or two to make them look more interesting, and off she flew to her room for the new dress.

It was a very pretty frock of dark blue with bloomers to match, and dainty little fluttery cross-stitch butterflies perched on the front and on the left sleeve. Mary Jane felt awfully proud to be wearing it. Just as she settled the belt in place and looked in the glass to make sure it was all right, Betty rang the front door bell—Mary Jane knew it was Betty for it was one long ring and two short taps—their signal.

Mrs. Merrill came quickly to fix Mary Jane’s hair ribbon and to kiss her good-by, and off Mary Jane scampered down the stairs.

“Where’s your report card?” asked Betty, when she saw her little friend was empty-handed.

“My report card?” repeated Mary Jane, so surprised she was almost stupid. “Why—why—why—I don’t know.”

“Well, they’ll put you back in the baby room again—Ed said so,” announced Betty, in a tone that implied she was ready for the worst—indeed, was expecting it.

Mary Jane’s eyes filled with tears. Wouldn’t that be awful? The baby room! Where could her card be? What had she done with it? But, silly, of course her mother would know.

Up the stairs she hurried, ringing the little bell at the front door. Mrs. Merrill heard her coming and opened it quickly.

“Why, Mary Jane Merrill!” she exclaimed as she saw the tears, “What in the world is the matter, child! Did you hurt yourself?”

“No,” said Mary Jane, “but I can’t remember where my report card is, and Betty says I’ll have to go into the baby room, if I don’t have it.”

“Betty, you shouldn’t tease that way,” reproved Mrs. Merrill. “She ought to have the card, and she might have to go into the baby room for a few hours if she didn’t have it. But folks who have done the work in there don’t have to stay, so that settles that. Now where did we put that card, Mary Jane!”

“I brought it home the last day before we went to Boston,” Mary Jane reminded her, “and you put it——” but she couldn’t remember any further.

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Merrill, “I remember that far myself, only everything was so rushing busy getting off that day I can’t recall. I suppose it’s right here in my little desk drawer.”

The two girls watched eagerly while she looked, but there was no report card there. She looked in the big drawers, in the little drawers, in her dresser, in the little drawer in the living-room table—where else could that thing be?

“I think you little folks had better run on,” she finally decided. “Betty wants to play in the yard, and anyway it’s nearly time for you to be starting. Alice is ready to go, I see, and of course she hasn’t her card either.”

“Yes I have, mother,” called Alice. “Here it is in my geography, so I’m all right.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Merrill, “that’s some comfort. Now, Mary Jane, don’t let anyone worry you. You go right to the room where you know you belong, and tell your new teacher your mother will bring your card over soon.”

Reluctantly Mary Jane started off with Betty. But she would have felt much better if she could have been clutching her card, as Betty was hers.

At the corner they met Ann Ellis, Betty’s friend from last year, and Janny and another little girl who was with them.

“Her name’s Ellyn,” announced Ann, “and she’s moved right over our apartment. She’s in third grade, too.”

“Everybody’s in third grade,” thought Mary Jane desperately; “Betty and Ann and now Ellyn. And I’ll have to go back to the baby room—maybe!”

There wasn’t much time left for play when they reached the school yard, partly because they had waited to hunt Mary Jane’s card, and partly because they had walked very slowly along the street as they were talking together. But perhaps that was just as well for Mary Jane, as she certainly did not feel much like playing. She couldn’t think of a thing but that lost card, and she kept looking and looking down the street in the hope that maybe her mother had found it and hurried over with it.

But no mother came. The bell rang, the children fell in line and marched upstairs, rather hit-or-miss fashion. Of course, they would learn better in a day or two.

Betty, Ann, and Ellyn proudly turned toward the third grade room, and Mary Jane went to the room that last year was second, high second.

She went into the cloakroom, even though she had no hat to hang up, for she wanted to put off talking to the teacher as long as ever she could. Every child, so far as she could see, was clutching a card—every single one. And Mary Jane felt very forlorn and lonely and miserable.

“If you please,” she finally mustered up courage to say to her teacher, “my mother will bring my card over afterward, but this is my room.”

“How do you know it’s your room?” demanded the teacher, crossly. She was new and young, and the strain of getting used to things was almost too much for her. “I can’t have a single child in my room who hasn’t a card. You must be a very careless little girl. Now you go straight to the office and stay there till the principal can see what to do about you.”

Mary Jane turned miserably and left the room. It was worse than she had feared. Worse than the baby room. To have to go to the principal’s office and stay there! Oh, dear! Down the stairs she went, her feet so heavy she could hardly move them. Along the hall—into the office. And there was the principal.

“Good morning,” said he pleasantly, “weren’t you one of our little girls last year? Of course, I remember. Your name is Merrill.”

Mary Jane smiled happily. That wasn’t such a bad beginning after all.

“It’s Mary Jane Merrill,” she told him. “And I’m sent down here——”

“To see what grade you should be in, of course,” said the principal promptly. Evidently he was awfully busy this first morning.

“Well, Mary Jane Merrill, you take that reader over there and read me page ten.” He pointed to a reader on the table.

Tremblingly Mary Jane picked it up, turned to page ten and began to read. She liked to read. Mother had her read books at home and she had a little magazine all her own, that she liked to read stories in, too. Reading wasn’t hard—not a bit.

“Well, that’s fine,” said the principal, when she had read a few sentences. “We’ll make sure later, but I think you ought to be in third grade—anybody who can read as well as you can, Mary Jane.” He scribbled something on a paper. “Now you take this up to Miss Montrow’s room and tell her to try you in third for a few days. And if you can do the work, you’re to stay. I thought last year, you’d be trying third this fall, but I waited to be sure.”

With a pretty little thank-you, Mary Jane took the paper he handed her and walked out of the room. But she couldn’t, simply couldn’t, walk up the stairs! She ran, skipping along, and her feet and her heart were so light and happy you never would suppose they belonged to the same person who had walked down those stairs such a few minutes ago—never. Miss Montrow—that was the room where Ann and Betty and Ellyn were—wouldn’t they be surprised, though? Well, just wait and see!

The door was shut. Mary Jane knocked firmly—she wasn’t a bit frightened any more, only her heart did go “thump, thump!” as she heard the teacher’s step across the room.