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Page 29
Old Shep woke up with a snort and Aunt Abigail fed him a handful of pop-
corn. Little Eleanor stirred in her sleep, stretched, yawned, and
nestled down into a ball again on the little girl's lap. Betsy could
feel in her own body the rhythmic vibration of the kitten's contented
purr.
Aunt Abigail looked up: "Finished your letter? I hope Harriet is no
worse. What does Frances say?"
Elizabeth Ann blushed a deep red and crushed the letter together in her
hand. She felt ashamed and she did not know why. "Aunt Frances
says, ... Aunt Frances says, ..." she began, hesitating. "She says Aunt
Harriet is still pretty sick." She stopped, drew a long breath, and went
on, "And she sends her love to you."
Now Aunt Frances hadn't done anything of the kind, so this was a really
whopping fib. But Elizabeth Ann didn't care if it was. It made her feel
less ashamed, though she did not know why. She took another mouthful of
pop-corn and stroked Eleanor's back. Uncle Henry got up and stretched.
"It's time to go to bed, folks," he said. As he wound the clock Betsy
heard him murmuring:
But when the sun his beacon red. ...
CHAPTER VII
ELIZABETH ANN FAILS IN AN EXAMINATION
I wonder if you can guess the name of a little girl who, about a month
after this, was walking along through the melting snow in the woods with
a big black dog running circles around her. Yes, all alone in the woods
with a terrible great dog beside her, and yet not a bit afraid. You
don't suppose it could be Elizabeth Ann? Well, whoever she was, she had
something on her mind, for she walked more and more slowly and had only
a very absent-minded pat for the dog's head when he thrust it up for a
caress. When the wood road led into a clearing in which there was a
rough little house of slabs, the child stopped altogether, and, looking
down, began nervously to draw lines in the snow with her overshoe.
You see, something perfectly dreadful had happened in school that day.
The Superintendent, the all-important, seldom-seen Superintendent, came
to visit the school and the children were given some examinations so he
could see how they were getting on.
Now, you know what an examination did to Elizabeth Ann. Or haven't I
told you yet?
Well, if I haven't, it's because words fail me. If there is anything
horrid that an examination DIDn't do to Elizabeth Ann, I have yet to
hear of it. It began years ago, before ever she went to school, when she
heard Aunt Frances talking about how SHE had dreaded examinations when
she was a child, and how they dried up her mouth and made her ears ring
and her head ache and her knees get all weak and her mind a perfect
blank, so that she didn't know what two and two made. Of course
Elizabeth Ann didn't feel ALL those things right off at her first
examination, but by the time she had had several and had rushed to tell
Aunt Frances about how awful they were and the two of them had
sympathized with one another and compared symptoms and then wept about
her resulting low marks, why, she not only had all the symptoms Aunt
Frances had ever had, but a good many more of her own invention.
Well, she had had them all and had them hard this afternoon, when the
Superintendent was there. Her mouth had gone dry and her knees had
shaken and her elbows had felt as though they had no more bones in them
than so much jelly, and her eyes had smarted, and oh, what answers she
had made! That dreadful tight panic had clutched at her throat whenever
the Superintendent had looked at her, and she had disgraced herself ten
times over. She went hot and cold to think of it, and felt quite sick
with hurt vanity. She who did so well every day and was so much looked
up to by her classmates, what MUST they be thinking of her! To tell the
truth, she had been crying as she walked along through the woods,
because she was so sorry for herself. Her eyes were all red still, and
her throat sore from the big lump in it.
And now she would live it all over again as she told the Putney cousins.
For of course they must be told. She had always told Aunt Frances
everything that happened in school. It happened that Aunt Abigail had
been taking a nap when she got home from school, and so she had come out
to the sap-house, where Cousin Ann and Uncle Henry were making syrup, to
have it over with as soon as possible. She went up to the little slab
house now, dragging her feet and hanging her head, and opened the door.
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