Princess Polly's Playmates Part 27

The child's face lighted with a happy smile.

"Oh, then, I don't want to go THIS year!" she cried, "I'll stay at home, as mama said, and keep school with my dolls and the kittens, but will you come sometimes, and see if I teach them right?"

"I certainly will," Miss Sterling said, kindly, "and I do hope your little cla.s.s will behave nicely."

"The dolls will," said Dollie, hopefully, "but the kittens' manners are--awful!"

"Then that shows how much they need a teacher," Miss Sterling said, and Dollie felt sure that it must be right for her to remain at home, that those kittens might not be neglected.

"They run away 'thout asking to be s'cused, and they walk right into the saucer of milk. I don't s'pect them to use spoons, but they needn't sit down in it. How'd I look, if I sat down in MY plate when I was eating?"

There was no one near to answer her question, and the little girl hurried home, convinced that there must be no delay in educating the kittens.

There was one small person in the town who feared the opening of school, and that was Gyp.

During vacation days he was care free, but as it neared the time when all the children of Avondale would be, for the greater part of the day, in school, he began to watch any person who pa.s.sed the shanty that he called "home," and to view with terror the blue coat of a policeman.

"They shan't ketch me!" he muttered, "I WON'T go to school!"

His mother, as ignorant as himself, enjoyed using him as a wood gatherer, and thus insisted that he was not old enough to go to school, when questioned by a member of the school committee.

"Not OLD enough!" cried the man in disgust, "why, woman, any child five years old can go to school."

"Gyp ain't five yet!" the woman had answered, stolidly.

"It's no use talking that way," was the quick reply, "he's NINE if he's a day. I think it's more likely that he's ten. Ye can't keep a child out of school unless he's less'n five, or over fourteen."

"Then he's OVER fourteen!" cried the woman.

"Less'n five one minute, and over fourteen the next!" said the man in disgust. "Grows kinder fast, don't he?"

"Well, he AIN'T goin' ter school!" the woman insisted, and the officer went his way.

Gyp, however, did not believe that he would long remain away from the shanty.

He determined to take no chances, and it seemed to him that the safest thing for him to do, was to keep well away from home.

At twilight he surprised his family by appearing with a huge bundle of f.a.gots that he had gathered in the woods. He gave them yet another surprise by packing the wood upon the old wood pile behind the house, and running off again for more.

He returned with a larger bundle than the first.

"Kind 'o busy, ain't yer?" questioned his mother, but Gyp made no reply.

She watched him, as he hastily piled the wood.

It certainly was unusual to see the boy work like that!

When asked to do a task, it was Gyp's habit to do it as slowly as possible, and to do as little as he dared.

Now, without waiting to be asked, he was working as if he had not a moment to spare!

Yet more amazing, on the next day, before any of his family was stirring, he was again at work, and soon a huge heap of f.a.gots rose in the little back yard.

"What AILS ye, Gyp?" his mother asked, "Be ye sick?"

Gyp never answered unless he chose, and this was surely one of the times when he did not choose.

"Ornary critter!" said the woman, as she picked up her broom, and went in, closing the door behind her.

"NOW, I'll go!" said Gyp, and he ran off across the fields.

He could take care of himself, and he always managed, when away from home, to steal enough so that he was well fed. He knew that, if wood were needed, his mother would hunt for him, but with the big pile of firewood behind the shanty, she would not search for him. She would be glad that for a time she need not feed him!

Gyp had been shrewd when he had made that woodpile!

He found, when he had crossed the fields, that he was on a country road, and near a large farmhouse, whose big barn-door stood invitingly open.

In front of the house stood a baker's cart, and Gyp looked about to see if the driver were in sight.

"He's in that house!" whispered Gyp, in great excitement.

In haste, lest the man return, and catch him, he pulled out a draw, s.n.a.t.c.hed some buns, and a pie, and darted with them into the barn, and up on the hay in the loft, where he hugely enjoyed his treat.

He heard the man run out to the cart, push the draw to, and then drive off.

"I've had a fine treat, an' he ain't missed what I took, so that's all right," he said, with a laugh, "an' I guess I'll see who's got some fruit in his garden. That's what I want now!"

He went down the ladder like a monkey, ran from the barn, and a little farther up the road, found a fine blackberry patch, just over the wall.

Of these he ate until he cared for no more, and then, like a full-fledged tramp, strode down the dusty road.

"I ain't goin' ter be ketched 'fore their old school begins, fer if I AM ketched, they'll make me begin with the others, an' I ain't a goin' ter, but after its goin' on two weeks, then I'll be safe. They won't bother me then, an' I'll hang around the schoolhouse an' make things lively!"

He smiled as he muttered this threat, and his black eyes twinkled. Oh, yes, he would be delighted to play any outrageous trick that might startle both teacher and pupils.

He did not know that during all the season, those who intended that every child in town should be educated, strove with the same vigilance as at the beginning of the year.

"Gyp's run away!"

"Why, Harry Grafton, he's always running away from somewhere, or from someone," said Leslie.

"Oh, that's when he's been stealing things," said Harry, "but this time it's different. He ran away from the shanty, and I know, because I heard his mother asking a policeman to find him, and she said he'd been gone a week!"

"Wherever he is, he won't stay long," said Leslie, "he'll come running home."

"Why will he?" questioned Harry. "If he's run away, it's because he's tired of that old shanty, and I should think he would be!"

"WE'D be tired of it," said Leslie, "but he's used to it, and he'll come back, just because it's his home."