“I wish summer would hurry up and go,” complained Brother one August day.  “Then we could really go to school.”

“Well, don’t wish that,” advised Louise.  “Goodness knows you’ll be tired of it soon enough!  Sister, what are you dragging out here?”

“My blackboard,” answered Sister, almost falling over the doorsill as she pulled her blackboard—­a gift from Grandmother Hastings—­ out onto the porch.

“Come on, Grace, we’ll go in,” proposed Louise, hastily gathering up her work.  “If these children are going to play school there won’t be any place for us!  We’ll go up to my room.”

“I thought maybe you would be the scholars,” said Brother, disappointed.  “We never have enough scholars.”

Louise was halfway up the stairs.

“You can play the dolls are scholars,” she called back.

Mother Morrison had gone over to Grandmother Hastings to help her make blackberry jam, and Louise and Grace had been left in charge of the house.

“Let me be the teacher,” begged Sister, when her blackboard was arranged to her liking.  “I know how, Roddy.”

“Well, all right, you can be teacher first,” agreed Brother.  “But after you play, then it’s my turn.”

Sister picked up a book and pointed to the blackboard.

“’Rithmetic class, go to the board,” she commanded.

Both she and Brother knew a good deal about what went on in classrooms, because they had listened to the older children recite.

“How much is sixty-eight times ninety-two?” asked Teacher-Sister importantly.

Brother made several marks on the blackboard with the crayon.

“Nine hundred,” he answered doubtfully.

“Correct,” said the teacher kindly.  “Now I’ll hear the class in spellin’.”

“I wish we had more scholars,” complained Brother.  “It’s no fun with just one; I have to be everything.”

“There’s that little boy again—­maybe he’d play,” suggested Sister, pointing to the red-haired, barefooted little boy who stood staring on the walk that led up to the porch.

He could not see through the screens very clearly, but he had heard the voices of the children and, stopping to listen, had drawn nearer and nearer.

“That’s Mickey Gaffney,” whispered Brother.  “Hello, Mickey,” he called more loudly.  “Want to come play school with us?”

Mickey came up on the steps, and flattened his nose against the screen door.

“I dunno,” he said doubtfully.  “How do you play?”

Sister pushed open the door for him, and Mickey rather shyly looked about him.

“It’s nice and shady in here,” he said appreciatively.  “You got a blackboard, ain’t you?”

“You should say ‘have’ a blackboard and ‘ain’t’ is dreadful,” corrected Sister, blissfully unaware that “dreadful” was not a good word to use.  “You can use the chalk if you’ll be a scholar, Mickey.”

Mickey was anxious to draw on the blackboard and he consented to play “just for a little.”