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Show ! ...Oar Boys and m$... EDITED EY AUNT BUSY. nieces tndUnfphewfh0t0raany ltao fr6a th them al. the Jdv, 2d Ler"4 t0 2 on,8,'Je f the paper only Sr,M0t,have letts too long. rVj'"' be muSeSUSCr,PtS f conons not accepted wID j HCx the silence OFJIMMY DERMOH. ; Miss Blake's usual, even voice was on this par- j licular morning subject to many fluctuations anil impatient accents. A grumbling tooth was pro claiming with irritating twinges that it must be taken to the dentist. As a matter of course, slow-minded, slow-minded, weak-memoried Jimmy Dermott was frequently fre-quently the victim of this irritability. "Why will Professor Pardee insist upon turning iv room into a veritable hospital?" thought Miss Blake, rebelliously. "Every defective piece of humanity hu-manity he sends up to Room 14, but that Dermott ; boy is the most aggravating." ' "Jimmy Dermott, must I tell you again to fas- : it'n your eyes upon your book, and stop looking at j inef" Jimmy's dreamy, admiring eyes reluctantly pulled themselves away from their object of adoration ado-ration and rested on the printed page. The restlenssness and nervousness of the teacher was soon reflected in the uneasiness of the roomful of children. All sorts of unexpected, unexplainabk wants made themselves evident, and hands were continually raised from every section of the room, until Miss Blake's remnant of patience was quite frayed out. "Children, this must be stopped. Every hand must go down immediately. Don't let me see another an-other hand raised for an hour, and attend to vour work." j For fully ten minutes sixty-threo littl; heads bent obediently over their desks, sixty-three pairs f; of eager, mischief -filled eyes tried to see only the black, uninteresting figures upon the open page, 1 ; 1 i Bixty-three pairs of restless feet, longing to dance and jump and play, twisted and untwisted theni- jj v selves in a nervous effort to keep them under con-:l con-:l i f trol; sixty-three little brains, actively at work at "I ? jfc problems quite other than the ones their eyes gazed 41 . ' upon, wondered why the hands of the clock moved ' ( . so 6lowly. ' Of all the sixty-three not one tried as hard to . 7 obey the striA letter of the order as Jimmy Der- f . mott; yet on one failed so lamentably. Try as he might to sit quietly, his nervous, pain-racked body, never meant to eit in the uncomfortable seats, writhed and turned to find an easier position. More often than to any other corner did Miss Blake's 6tern, reproving eyes turn and fix themselves on the boy. Jimmy sat in the back seat of the third row, and as he shifted in his seat in one last vain endeavor en-deavor to be comfortable, his eyes fell upon the ventilator flue. The ventilator flue might suddenly have turned into a real old-fashioned ghost, one could imagine from, the look upon Jimmy's face. With an effort he turned his eyes to Miss Blake's face. Quite evidently she had failed to see what Jimmy saw. Her thoughts were centered upon the aching tooth, and with cheek resting upon her hand she pressed a handkerchief to her face, a row of frowns and wrinkles marring her pretty forehead. Jimmy's lips opened to give a cry, and then he remembered. The brain slow to read the printed words was old in common sense. Jimmy's lips wei e tightly closed, and sealed with the seal of heroism. Then Jimmy's hand, weighted, it seemed to the boy, by leaden weights, was raised high above the heads of the children. Miss Blake looked over it, looked under it, looked to the left and to the right of it, looked straight through it,' it seemed to J lm-my. lm-my. hut never deigned to see it had she not said only ten minutes before that no hands were to be raised for an hour. Jimmy took one side glance at the ventilator flue. No, there could be no mistake. mis-take. Jimmy's weak, defective eyes had seen aright. The blue-veined hand climbed a little higher high-er Miss Blake must be made to see it it waved VVV.N frantically, almost hysterically in the air like a s flag of distress of a shipwrecked mariner. Still Miss Blake persisted in remaining quite oblivious to the hand. The tense, straining mem-j mem-j ber, with its bony outlines, grew more agonisingly f eloquent in its effort to say what was forbidden the '. J , tongue, until at last , even Miss Blake's unseeing kpyes were forced to recognize it. "Jimmy Dermott, what did I say about raising f hands P The perspiration stood on Jimmy's pale t j face, now growing gray with apprehension of his V beloved teacher's displeasure and fearful of impending im-pending danger. Sixty-tw heads turned to note the victim of the sharp warning from teacher, and even the children saw in the appealing hand some- thing quite out of the ordinary. Miss Blake was puzzled. ? "Jimmy Dermott," she tried to make her voice , as stern, as possible; "why will you persist in dis- obeving me! What do you want?" "To speak to yoxi," cried the child excitedly, the words tumbling from feverish lips. Mis3 Blake nodded her consent uncertainly it was a clear breach of authority. As fast as hi? crutches would allow, Jimmy hobbled down the .-isle, and with mouth close to Miss Blake's ear, Eiiid just three words. Miss Blake's eyes sought the ventilator flue. Miss Blake's face grew many shades paler, a Ktrangi? shadow crossed her eyes, and her voice hod in it a bit of tremor as she said: "Jimmy, take vour scat," Jimmv had controlled his voice; he had now t):e ft ill more difficult task of controlling his eyes. He deliberately turned his face away from the tongue of yellow flame he knew was creeping up through the smoke, and walked quietly to his seat. "Every face this way," commanded Miss Blake, every" syllable even and calm now she knew they 1 1 mu't be for the lives of hundreds of children deli de-li pended upon her. "Let every child fix attention 'i - upon the picture of the sheep over my desk and cee if thev can hold it there until I return. Stepping quickly out into the long corridor, silent ave for the dull sound of classes reciting be-hind be-hind closed doors, she reached up to the fire gong and sounded four sharp strokes. Shuffling feet 1 on the floor above and in the room adjoining told her that the alarm had been heeded, and that in --'c-ri&fc o Th" oft -repeated precepts of the fixe arilf hundreds of children and their teachers were escaping gravest peril. In another moment the children in her room, responsive to her command to fall into line and follow her, marched quietly out of the room, unconscious of their escape from ) "Excited groups of pupils, teachers, and principal prin-cipal stood outside the grounds watching the heroic efforts of the firemen to save the buildmg. A good dav's work, Miss Blake," cried the principal, seeking seek-ing her in the crowd. "You faced the situation "Don't thank me, Professor Pardee," there was a tremor in Miss Blake's voice-"it was Jim-mv-Jimmy Dermott little hero. Look! the fires Parting on the west wing Room 14. See! they returned re-turned the hose that way yes it was Jimmy, the cripple you sent me is that fireman going to fall? , J30 didn't want in my room, you remem- at ' look at him he'W be on fire in a minute and I never thanked him Jimmy, you know; where 13 he, I wonder? he sat in the back row-how row-how hot it is getting." Her eyes were frantically scanning the groups of children on the sidewalk, but no Jimmy was to be seen. "Jimmy Jimmy Dermott," Miss Blake stood not upon her dignity, and called aloud at the top of her voice. As she hurried here and there from one group to another, calling the name, a small boy stopped her: "I sa whim, ma'am, 'way back he was somethin' happened hap-pened to his crutch I tried fer to help, but he told me to go on." They tried to stop the figure flying toward the burning building. Up the one stairway still untouched un-touched by fire she rushed, unheeding calls of friends or firemen. The building by this time was in flames. Despite heroic efforts to keep it under control, it burst through window and doorway, it enveloped the building in its glowing mantle. ' A groan went up from the onlookers as the young teacher disappeared within the building. A fireman fire-man sprang after her. The busy engines wheezed and tooted; streams of water played here, there and everywhere; the voice of the fire chief could be heard above the uproar giving sharp, curt orders ; but the crowd stood speechless, breathlessly watching watch-ing the entrance. When Miss Blake, half supported support-ed by a fireman, carrying a weight under which she almost staggered, appeared at the door, a shout ' arose to heaven that was heard for blocks around. It even aroused the half-unconscious boy in the teacher's arms. He gazed in awed wonder at the loved face above him, felt the tender warmth of the sheltering refuge, and as the cheers gradually defined themselves to mean "Three cheers for Jimmy Jim-my Dermott Jimmy Dermott, what saved us all three cheers," he realized with a sigh of unutterable unutter-able content that he was understood. Julia F. Deane in the United Presbyterian. |