"Me, too," added Percival. "Patrick Brennan he goes on that school und
he gives me over yesterday, a bloody nose. I don' need I should go on
no school mit somebody what makes like that mit me."

But with the assistance of the neighbours, the policeman on the beat
and the truant officer, they were finally dragged to the halls of
learning and delivered into the hands of Miss Bailey, who installed
them in widely separated seats and seemed blandly unimpressed by their
evident determination to make things unpleasant in Room 18. She met
Leah's anticipatory apologies with:

"Of course they'll be good. I shall see that they behave. Yes, I shall
see, too, that Patrick Brennan does not fight with Percival. You musn't
worry about them any more, but I fear they have made worrying a habit
with you. If you will send them to school at a quarter to nine every
morning, and at ten minutes to one in the afternoon, I shall do the
rest."

And Leah went out into the sunshine free, for the first time in six
years. Free to wander through the streets, to do a little desultory
shopping, to go down to the river and to watch the workmen driving
rivets in the great new bridge. Never had she spent so pleasant a
morning, and her heart was full of gratitude and peace when she
reflected that hours such as these would henceforth be the order of
the day.

The advantages of a free education did not appeal to "them Yonowsky
devils." Leah was forced to drag her reluctant charges twice a day to
the school-house door--sometimes even up the stairs to Room 18--and
the reports with which Miss Bailey met her were not enthusiastic.