Oh, how she wished she could! When they
stood up to go back to their seats she hesitated, hung her head, and
looked very unhappy. "Did you want to say something to me?" asked the
teacher, pausing with a bit of chalk in her hand.
The little girl went up to her desk and said, what she knew it was her
duty to confess: "I can't be allowed to read in the seventh reader. I
don't write a bit well, and I never get the mental number-work right. I
couldn't do ANYthing with seventh-grade arithmetic!"
The teacher looked a little blank and said: "_I_ didn't say anything
about your number-work! I don't KNOW anything about it! You haven't
recited yet." She turned away and began to write a list of words on the
board. "Betsy, Ralph, and Ellen study their spelling," she said. "You
little ones come up for your reading."
Two little boys and two little girls came forward as Elizabeth Ann began
to con over the words on the board. At first she found she was listening
to the little, chirping voices, as the children straggled with their
reading, instead of studying "doubt, travel, cheese," and the other
words in her lesson. But she put her hands over her ears, and her mind
on her spelling. She wanted to make a good impression with that lesson.
After a while, when she was sure she could spell them all correctly, she
began to listen and look around her. She always "got" her spelling in
less time than was allowed the class, and usually sat idle, looking out
of the window until that study period was over.
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