"Heigh there--heigh there!
Heigh--heigh--heigh!"
The school was close in front of them. An enormous building of brick and
tile wedged into a disordered mass of tenements, shops and factories, it
had been built around a court shut out from the street by a high steel
fence. They squeezed into the gateway, through which a shouting punching
mob of urchins were now pushing in; and soon from a balcony above Roger
looked down into the court, where out of a wild chaos order was appearing.
Boys to the right and girls to the left were forming in long sinuous lines,
and three thousand faces were turned toward the building. In front appeared
the Stars and Stripes. Then suddenly he heard a crash from underneath the
balcony, and looking down he saw a band made up of some thirty or forty
boys. Their leader, a dark Italian lad, made a flourish, a pass with his
baton, and the band broke into a blaring storm, an uproarious, booming
march. The mob below fell into step, and line after line in single file the
children marched into their school.
"Look up! Look all around you!" He heard Deborah's eager voice in his ear.
And as he looked up from the court below he gave a low cry of amazement. In
hundreds of windows all around, of sweatshops, tenements, factories, on
tier upon tier of fire escapes and even upon the roofs above, silent
watchers had appeared. For this one moment in the day the whole congested
neighborhood had stopped its feverish labor and become an amphitheater with
all eyes upon the school.
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