"
"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 passed 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.
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