The Spyglass Tree Read Online Free

young ladies for whose sake princes also had to be charming no matter what else their ancestral mission required them to achieve. Outstanding boys were splendid young men, and when she called you one of her splendid young men it was precisely as if she were making you one of the Knights of her Round Table, which was no less real for being invisible.
    Not that you didn’t miss being outside anymore, especially when you looked out of the windows, because from my seat every time you stood up you could see northeast across the vocational workshop area to the poplar tree-line and the sky stretching away above that part of Chickasabogue Swamp and the L & N Railroad canebrake territory, nor was I quite ready to give up rambling and meandering with Little Buddy Marshall. But once Miss Lexine Metcalf was there for you Monday through Friday, I began to make up more and more excuses not to play hooky to do so.
    The first time she said who if not you was before class one Wednesday morning. I was there that early because I wanted to have the globe and map rack all to myself while everybody else was either still on the way or waiting and playing around outsideuntil the first bell for the flag formation. When she looked up from her desk and saw me coming in as I had asked permission to do, she said, How conscientious you are, a young man with initiative, and why not, because who if not you.
    Who indeed? she said the next time, which was the day I stayed after school because I wanted to read the new bulletin board display all by myself and the time after that was the day I stayed in during the first part of the noon recess to work on my cutouts for the new sand-table project, and when I came out to the playground Simon Ray Hargroves saw me and came up and whispered, Hey, Scooter, boy you better watch out, man, you mess around and let old lady Metcalf get her claws on you and she ain’t gone never let you alone. He was whispering not only because he was being confidential but also because you’re not supposed to use nicknames on campus. You could get demerits for that, just as you could for keeping your hands in your pockets and wearing your cap crooked or backward.
    Not as long as you were at Mobile County Training School, he said, and I said, Not me, man, and he said, Well, you sure better watch out then, because everybody knows she always been dead set on finding somebody so she can help old man B. Franklin Fisher hook him and turn him into a mad genius. Man, before long she going to be giving you a whole stack of extra work and stuff just to see how much more you can do and the more you do, the more she going to keep piling on and piling on.
    Which by that time she had already begun doing and was to continue to do right on up through each succeeding homeroom teacher until it was time to turn me over to Mister B. Franklin Fisher himself for the Early Bird program, reminding me all the while that some are called and some are not.
    And some are also called, she also used to say, and heed not. She said. Some are called to the church, some to the bedside, some as advocates to the bar of justice. While I myself am called to the classroom. Who can tell just what you might be called to do, my bright-eyed young man. For all we know,you may have to travel far and wide just to find out what it is you are called for
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    When I came out onto the play area late during another noon recess period, the first one to spot me was Jaycee Robinson from Chickasaw Terrace and he said, Boy, I’m telling you, pretty soon you ain’t hardly going to be able to make it out here at all no more. Boy, look to me like she just about got you right where she want you already, and I said, That’s what you say, man. That’s what you say.
    Because by that time I was absolutely satisfied that she was always going to make sure that I got outside in plenty of time to join in whatever games they were playing that day, because sometimes I used to sneak glances back up at the