Philip's face shone soapily next morning. His black hair lay stretched in rigidly parallel formations on both sides of his impeccable parting. Channah had shined his button-boots with so much rubbing and spitting into congealed blacking that his boots seemed to focus all the light in the kitchen. His mother had adorned his blouse with a great bow of vermilion sateen.
"Is pleaseteachers like policemans?" Philip asked, as Channah led him by a hand clammy with apprehension along the Doomington Road to the Bridgeway Elementary School.
"Oh no! Pleaseteachers are much more lovely!" was the reply. "Policemen only lock little boys up, but pleaseteachers give 'em toffee—and flowers!"
"And flowers?" echoed Philip incredulously.
When they arrived at the entrance to the school, a sudden nausea overwhelmed Philip.
"I'se not going to school!" he said suddenly and firmly.
"Feivele, what do you mean?"
"I'se not going!"
"What's the matter with you? Why aren't you going?"
"Dat's why!"
But Channah had not come unprepared for such an emergency. Mrs. Massel had anticipated it with a stick-jaw of Moishele's best. She held it towards the child and made provocative labial noises.
"Aren't you going now?"
"No!" he said a little more doubtfully.
She had another weapon in the armoury.
"Tatte will give you such a pitch-patch!" she said threateningly—pitch-patch being a form of castigation among all nations as constant in method as it is variable in name.
In the surge of new fears, Reb Monash had been temporarily obscured. Philip's mind travelled back swiftly to the knees of Reb Monash where at so sinless an age he had already lain transversely more than once. He contemplated the possibility of pitch-patch for some moments.
"Gib me de stickjaw, den!" he said.
"You can't eat it now!"
"One suck!" he wheedled.
They passed duly through the vestibule into the great "infants' hall." At its geometrical centre the principal pleaseteacher sat, pavilioned in terrors. A few words of high import passed between Miss Featherstone and Channah. Before Philip's eyes the walls soared endlessly into perpendicular space. There was no ceiling. He made the hideous discovery that there was no floor to the room. His shining boots hung suspended in space. Strange antiphonies propounded and expounded the cosmic mysteries. He was lost. He was rolling headlong among the winds, like a piece of cotton-fluff lifted high above the roofs of Angel Street.
What was this? The pleaseteacher was looking at him; her mouth was opening; there were big cracks on each side of her nose. Yes, she was smiling into him. He resumed his ponderable qualities. He was a little boy dismally sick in the infants' hall of the Bridgeway Elementary School. He preferred to be a piece of cotton-fluff. It was a more impersonal doom.
"What's your name, little boy?"
He wondered whether it was an impertinence to reply. It was funny and dry at the back of his throat. He stared fixedly at the crack on the left side of her nose.
"What's your name, little boy?" A certain acidulation had thinned her voice.
"My name Feivele an' I live at ten Angel Street an' I'm five years old an' my farver's Rebbie Massel!" he said, the words trembling out in a bewildered spate.
"Will you ask your brother to speak a little more slowly and distinctly, Miss Massel? Thank you. Now what's your name, little boy?"
"Philip Massel, pleaseteacher!"
"Now, Philip Massel. I'm your head mistress. You must call me Miss Featherstone. Miss Briggs!" she called, "Miss Briggs! Will you please put Philip Massel into your class?" Then turning to Philip, "You will kindly call Miss Briggs 'teacher.' You understand?"
"Yes, pleaseteacher!"
"Stupid! But he'll soon know better," she assured Channah.
"Yes, Miss Featherstone!" Channah corroborated. Philip's hand feverishly held his sister's all this while.
"You'd better just see him to his place," said Miss Featherstone to Channah, as Miss Briggs led the way to her class.
"Sit here, Philip," said Miss Briggs, "next to Hyman Marks!"
"Don't go 'way, don't go 'way!" Philip huskily implored Channah. Hundreds of scornful eyes were stripping him bare of his blouse, his shined boots, his bow of vermilion sateen, till they all lay at his feet in a miserable heap and he shivered there in the cold, naked, despised. "Don't go 'way!" he moaned.
Channah looked despairingly towards Miss Briggs.
Miss Briggs seized her chalk significantly. It was time the new-comer had settled down.
"I'll tell you what," said Channah, "I'll go to Moishele's and buy you a ha'pny tiger nuts and a box of crayons. And I'll come back straight away."
"Promise!" he demanded in anguish.
"Emmes!" she said, invoking the Hebrew name of Truth.
"Emmes what?" He knew that Truth unsupported by an invocation to the Lord was a weak buttress.
"Emmes adoshem!" she said, her heart sinking at the perjury. But, she consoled herself, it was not as if she had sworn by the undiluted form of the oath, "Emmes adonoi!" from the violation of which solemnity there is no redemption.
Philip saw her disappear through the doors. A black cloud of loneliness enveloped him until he could hardly breathe. The terrifying sing-song of these young celebrants at their fathomless ceremony had begun again.
Twice one are two, One and one are two! Twice two are four, Two and two are four!
Fantastic hieroglyphs danced across the blackboard at the dictate of Miss Briggs' chalk. The heavy minutes ticked and ticked in a reiteration of monochrome and despair.
Twice one are two, One and one are two!
What teeth she had, Miss Briggs! Not like his mother's! A little yellow his mother's were, but small and neat, as he observed whenever she smiled one of her tired and sweet smiles. What was the specific purpose of Miss Briggs' teeth? Why should those two at the top in front be so large and pointed? He had heard old Mo who sold newspapers tell tales about canninbles. Wass Miss Briggs a canninble? Oh the long, long Channahless minutes! When would she come? What? Some one was whispering behind him.
"Say, kid!"
Philip was afraid to turn round. What would Miss Briggs do if he turned round? And she had two such horrid teeth, at the top, in front!
"Say, kid! Got anyfing?"
Philip turned his head round fearfully. A villainously scowling face was bent over from the bench behind towards his own.
"Aven't yer got nuffing?"
Philip looked helplessly into the forbidding face.
"I tell yer, kid!" the voice menaced, "if yer don't gib me anyfing, I'll spifflicate yer!"
The process of spifflication sounded as terrible as it certainly was vague. Philip put his hand into his trouser-pocket where the lump of stickjaw lay warmly spreading its seductive bounties over the lining. To part with a whole lump of stickjaw from which the one due he had extracted was a single suck! But, on the other hand, spifflication! And moreover, soon, oh surely very, very soon, Channah would come back with the tiger nuts, not to