.. help! Why didn't Uncle Henry help! Uncle Henry
continued intently figuring on the back of his envelope.
Elizabeth Ann, the perspiration starting out on her forehead, pulled on
the other line. The horses turned back up the little slope, the wheel
grated sickeningly against the wagonbox--she was SURE they would tip
over! But there! somehow there they were in the road, safe and sound,
with Uncle Henry adding up a column of figures. If he only knew, thought
the little girl, if he only KNEW the danger he had been in, and how he
had been saved ... ! But she must think of some way to remember, for sure,
which her right hand was, and avoid that hideous mistake again.
And then suddenly something inside Elizabeth Ann's head stirred and
moved. It came to her, like a clap, that she needn't know which was
right or left at all. If she just pulled the way she wanted them to go--
the horses would never know whether it was the right or the left rein!
It is possible that what stirred inside her head at that moment was her
brain, waking up. She was nine years old, and she was in the third A
grade at school, but that was the first time she had ever had a whole
thought of her very own. At home, Aunt Frances had always known exactly
what she was doing, and had helped her over the hard places before she
even knew they were there; and at school her teachers had been carefully
trained to think faster than the scholars.
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