Trouble According to Humphrey by Betty G. Birney

Author:Betty G. Birney [Birney, Betty G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101653685
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2008-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

Too Much Payne

While I’d been worrying about everybody’s troubles, my classmates kept working on Humphreyville. One day, they all left to go on a field trip to City Hall. How Og and I would have loved to go along! When they came back, Tabitha, Seth and Richie made a model park with swings and a slide, a baseball field and lots of trees. Tabitha must have made dozens of paper leaves for those trees!

At the same time, Richie, Gail and A.J. built a courthouse with pillars made out of the cardboard rolls that come in the middle of paper towels. (Mrs. Brisbane always keeps plenty of paper towels near my cage.)

Garth, Art and Heidi made a school out of plastic blocks. It had a playground, too! Humphreyville would certainly be a fun place to live, with two playgrounds in it.

I wasn’t sure what Miranda and Sayeh were working on, but they kept looking over at me and giggling. In fact, their giggling made me uncomfortable. The more they giggled, the more I wiggled, and that made them laugh even more. I was glad to see that Miranda was feeling better.

I wished I felt better.

I felt especially bad when on Tuesday, Mrs. Brisbane suggested that Paul spend some time helping Mandy study for the math test she was going to retake.

“Know-It-All-Paul?” she blurted out. “He’s just a baby!”

“Is not!” a voice called out.

Art had actually jumped out of his seat and his fists were clenched, though I don’t think he was the type to hit anybody.

Paul looked as if someone had already punched him in the stomach.

Mrs. Brisbane wasn’t happy. “Sit down, Art. Now, Mandy, that was cruel and uncalled-for. I demand that you apologize right now.”

Mandy hung her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Paul’s so smart, he makes me feel dumb.”

“You are not dumb, Mandy. No one in this class is dumb! Now, I want you and Paul to sit in the back of the room and go over your test together while the rest of us work on some other problems.”

This time, Mandy didn’t complain. She and Paul sat in the back of the room. He went over her paper and quietly talked to her about it. Sometimes she seemed puzzled. Sometimes she nodded her head. By the time math class was over, she and Paul both looked happier.

On Thursday, during morning recess, Mandy took her math test again. She worked HARD-HARD-HARD, sometimes tugging at her hair and sometimes sticking the tip of her tongue out a little. (I do that, too, when I’m concentrating.) She worked through the whole recess period and then, with a loud sigh, handed her paper to Mrs. Brisbane.

“I’ll grade it right now if you like, Mandy.”

“Okay, but I probably didn’t do any better.”

“You studied, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stay while I grade it?” Mrs. Brisbane asked.

“Yes, please,” said Mandy.

Mrs. Brisbane took the test to her desk. Og didn’t move a muscle, but I nervously gnawed on my paws. The teacher’s pencil made some marks on the first page and a few on the second page.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.