Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

"The party needs your vote."

"It can't get it till I'm lining five years in Broo'Klyn."

"Who said so?"

"Mary. I mean, Miss Mary. Three years if you marry an American woman, she said."

"Are you figuring on petting married?"

"I got no intentions."

"Miss Mary," said The Boss carefully, "is kind to dogs and old people and servants. 'Tis her nature. So don't get idears."

He saw Patsy's eyes flicker. Hit the bull's eye that time, thought Moriarity. Got to watch him fron,' now on.

Patsy refused to go to night school. He said: "Me days belong to you but me nights belong to me." (He'd been in America long enough now to know his rights.)

Moriarity was in a fix. The boss over him had created a job: a night class in civics and current events to give employment to a spinster relative of a boss two bosses higher than Moriarity. To make it legitimate with the school board, the class had to have an enrollment of thirty. Orders had gone out from the top to fill the class.

"Tell you what, Pathrick," said Moriarity. "You go to night school and I'll raise your pay fifty cents a week more."

"And what is fifty cents?" shrugged Patsy.

"Fifty cents!" Moriarity grew Iyrical. "Fifty cents is fifty clay pipes. It's ten beers a week in a grand saloon with the boys 1 4-'1

ch~sterin' around and laughing and singing and yourself amongst them. It's five Saturday nights at the Gat-tee Bur-less show and yourself high in the gallery where you can see all."

"No!" Patsy was adamant.

Mary spoke to him the next morning. "It would be nice if you v. ent to night school, Patrick. You could dress up nights in your nice suit, get out among people, perhaps make a friend or two…."

He didn't want to go but he wanted to please her. She'd been SO kind; treated him as a friend, not a servant. Only last week, she'd given him a beautiful plate hand-painted china, painted by herself to put his pipes on. Her gift of stationery, ink and pen and the pretty plate standing on his little table made his room seem more cheerful and warm.

"I will go," he said. "1~ or you."

A delicate pink color flowed into her cheeks. She said, "Thank you, Patrick."

Patsy sat in a seat built for a ten-year-old child. His legs were jammed under the little desk. He looked around the classroom trying to find someone to hate. He'd about decided that there was no one in the room worth hating when he saw a banty Irishman slip into the seat across the aisle.

He'll never make pa' feet standing up, thought Patsy scornfully. And he's got no teeth, the way his Oath is folded into his face.

The little fellow wore a broken-visored cap pulled down over one eye. There were a couple of pearl buttons sewed on the visor and loose, dirty threads where other buttons had been.

So, deduced Patsv. '4 fishmonger, come from the slops of Dublin where all the black Prattisstants come frown.

The little man, feeling that Patsy was sizing him up, turned to grin at him. Patsy scowled in return. Patsy was about to start an argument by asking the man who did he think he was looking at when the teacher came in.

She was a buxom, micldle-aged woman. There was a black button on her dress from which hung a pair of pince-nez eyeglasses. She rapped the edge of her desk with a brass-edged ruler. She pulled on lier glasses and an attached chain came out of the button. She pinched the glasses onto the bridge of her nose.

'This is a class in civics, current events and American citizen [4y 1

ship," she announced. "The class meets five nights a week.

Mv name is McCarthy. Miss," she emphasized. "Now I will take your names, gentlemen."

The little banty Irishman tittered at the word

''Gentlemen.'' Miss McCarthy pointed her ruler at him.

"You!" she said. "Stand up!" He did so. The little fellow was under five feet tall. She removed her glasses from her nose and held them daintily, shoulder high, between her thumb and forefinger. "Remove your hat"' He obeyed.

"What's your name?"

"MacCart'y," he said. "A~lick."

She thought he was mimicking her. She came from behind her desk. "What did you say>" she said menacingly, spacing each word.

His eyes rolled in terror. He gasped "Mick Mack. ."

He was so scared he couldn't get the "Carthy" out. "click Mack," he repeated.

"Mick Mack?" she asked with a puzzled frown.

The class howled with laughter. She gave her glasses a jerk and they crawled up on her bosom, following the chain which disappeared in the button. She opened her desk drawer and took out an Indian chlb. She hefted it by the neck.

"Attention! " she said. She waited for silence. "I don't like teaching you any more than you like being taught. I

do not want any trouble. But if anyone of you is looking for trouble, I'll be glad to accommodate him. Any questions?" She tightened her grip on the Indian club.

There were no questions.

Patsy was filled with admiration of the woman. My God, he thought, you can't love her but you sure as hell got to respect her.' She went through the class and got the names. Some were hard to get. A person could tell his name but he couldn't spell it. A Pole, whose name sounded like Powllowski, she announced would be set down as Powers.

When it came to a Schwarzkopf, she stated that, from that time on, it would be Blackhead. The poor man begged to be permitted to keep his name but Miss McCarthy was adamant. All names, she stated, except the Irish ones, had to be Americanized. That was the first step in Americanization. ManN a poor fellow won a new name that night.

The name taking took lip most of the session but there was time for a short lesson. "Now, gentlemen," said Miss McCarthy, "we'll

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start with a topic of current importance. The protective tariff." She explained the tariff as something the Republicans in Congress were devising to ruin the country. She used the proposed tariff on tin as an example. "Tomorrow, you can go into a certain store and buy a the cup for five cents. Next year, if Mr. McKinley has his way, the same tin cup, in the same store, will cost you twenty-five cents."

"Pst, Mick Mack," whispered Patsy across the aisle.

"What store does she mean?"

"Why, the certain store what sells tin cups," said Mick Mack.

Patsy gave him a contemptuous look as he thought: Why the durtee little showoff of a Unseen!

He spoke to me! thought Mick Mack rapturously. Now I

have a friend!

Patsy liked to go to night school. He liked to dress up and have Mary wave to him from the parlor window as he left. He liked the admiring glances the girls walking on the street gave him. He liked his teacher and he liked to despise Mick Mack. It made him glow all over It was coming on Christmas and Miss McCarthy made an announcement. "Tomorrow will be our last class before the Christmas vacation. No one of you is to bring me a Christmas present of any sort whatever. Is that clear?"

The next night, the last session, she came in lugging a large suitcase. "What's that for?" Patsy whispered to Mick Mack.

"Christmas presents."

"What Christmas presents?"

"What we all is going to give her."

True, there was a Christmas-wrapped package on every desk but his. He was the only one who had taken her literally. He was embarrassed. He liked his teacher and would have liked to give her a present.

"But why did she say nobody was supposed to give her a present? "