Cold indeed would be the heart of any masculine First Reader who could see, unmoved, the picture conjured up of Teacher's words. They were well accustomed to impromptu races, run on a course all thick beset with push-carts, ash cans, and humanity. Other tests of physical strength, with the exception by an occasional hand-to-hand conflict, neither determined, scientific, nor conclusive, were practically unknown. But to run on a prepared course surrounded by a stationary and admiring audience, of which Miss Bailey and the feminine First Readers formed an important part, was quite a different thing. Then, too, "prizes" was an alluring word. Teacher had shown it to mean articles of price and great attractiveness. The "clean-hands-for-a-week" prize, won by Sadie Gonorowsky, with Isidore Applebaum as a close second, had been a little clasp pin of the American flag in enamel, and the "cleanest-shoes-for-a-month" prize had been a pair of roller skates.
The masculine element of the Room 18's Board of Monitors met that afternoon in the cellar of a recently burned tenement to discuss the situation. If it would pleasure Miss Bailey to see her adherents racing round a garden in abbreviated costumes, there was, they decided, no very serious reason against giving her that pleasure. It was only a shade more unreasonable than other desires of hers to which they had bent their energies, and since there was question of reward, it became even more a duty and a pleasure to oblige her.
"But we ain't got no Gardens," Nathan Spiderwitz pointed out.
"We'll use my yard," said Patrick. "When me mother has company she always calls our yard a garden. It's got a tree in it, and we can get some flags to hang on the clothes line. I was askin' me big brother last night, and he knows all about them games. He'll tell us mor'n Ikey Borrachsohn can about how the thing goes, and when we get it fixed just right, we'll have Miss Bailey and the girls come round some Saturday morning and see us run and jump. Say, it'll be great! I can run faster than any feller in the class; an' I bet I can jump higher too, an' I bet I can throw things farther, too, an' I bet I can lick ye all pole-vaultin', too. Me brother was tellin' me about that."