Nine months, is it not?"
"Teacher, yiss ma'an. I comes out of Russia," responded Morris, on the
verge of tears and with his face buried in Teacher's dress.
Now Mr. O'Shea had his prejudices--strong and deep. He had been given
jurisdiction over that particular district because it was his native
heath, and the Board of Education considered that he would be more in
sympathy with the inhabitants than a stranger. The truth was absolutely
the reverse. Because he had spent his early years in a large old house
on East Broadway, because he now saw his birthplace changed to a squalid
tenement, and the happy hunting grounds of his youth grown ragged and
foreign--swarming with strange faces and noisy with strange tongues--Mr.
O'Shea bore a sullen grudge against the usurping race.
He resented the caressing air with which Teacher held the little hand
placed so confidently within her own and he welcomed the opportunity of
gratifying his still ruffled temper and his racial antagonism at the
same time. He would take a rise out of this young woman about her
little Jew. She would be comforted later on. Mr. O'Shea rather fancied
himself in the role of comforter, when the sufferer was neither old nor
ill-favored. And so he set about creating the distress which he would
later change to gratitude and joy.
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