A BUSY MORNING
Elizabeth Ann peered through the window--she and Doris were in the back
of the bus and couldn’t hope to get out for several seconds. Elizabeth
Ann saw that the yard fairly swarmed with children, and that they made
a rush for the gate to see who had arrived on the bus.
“I think this school is too big,” whispered Doris, who felt she had
seen enough strange children to last her for a long time.
“Oh, we can play tag and everything,” Elizabeth Ann reminded her
happily, standing up because the girl in front of her was standing up
and that meant it was time to leave the bus.
Elizabeth Ann had no brothers or sisters, and she had never in all her
life had too many children to play with. She thought that school yard
was a fine place and she could just see herself playing tag in it from
one end to the other.
“You have to go in and be registered,” said Catherine Gould.
These were almost the only words she had said since Roger had begun to
talk to Elizabeth Ann. Catherine had talked to Mattie Harrison most of
the time.
“Where do we register?” Elizabeth Ann asked, following Catherine out of
the bus.
Doris came next and pressed close to her cousin. Doris was beginning to
wish she had not come.
“I’ll show you,” offered Catherine, pushing her way through the groups
of laughing, chattering children.
Elizabeth Ann and Doris followed her into the building, down a long
hall, and up a short flight of stairs.
“Miss Owen, here’s Elizabeth Ann and Doris,” said Catherine, as soon as
she opened the door nearest to the stairs.
Miss Owen, the teacher, was talking to another teacher at her desk.
She looked surprised, but when she saw Elizabeth Ann and Doris she came
over to them instantly.
“How do you do?” she said in a lovely voice. “I’m glad you are going
to be in my room this term. Your Uncle Hiram wrote to me about you and
I’ve been expecting you.”
Of course that made even the shy Doris feel at home at once. Then
Miss Owen showed them their desks and the cloakroom and then the
nine o’clock bell rang and it was time to go down stairs where the
auditorium was, and where assembly was held every morning.
This was the largest school Doris had ever attended. It was the largest
Elizabeth Ann had ever gone to, except the school where she had been
a pupil in New York when she visited her Aunt Isabel. This new school
was, as Aunt Grace had explained, really six or seven little country
schools rolled into one--and when all the pupils were gathered together
in the auditorium, they filled all the seats that were arranged in rows
on the first floor, and rose in tiers in the gallery.
And how they could sing! One of the older pupils played the piano for
them and when the students sang the hymn Elizabeth Ann wondered whether
Uncle Hiram, at home in the Bonnie Susie, couldn’t hear them. She sang,
too, and so did Doris. It was impossible to be in that auditorium and
not join in the song. Elizabeth Ann knew right away that she was going
to like the new school.
Afterward she was just as sure. They marched back to their class room
and Miss Owen began to teach them spelling. They had spelling and
reading, and then it was time for recess. They were allowed twenty
minutes for recess, and Miss Owen made every one of them go out and
play in the yard. She said no pupil of hers could sit indoors on such a
fine day.
Elizabeth Ann and Doris were asked to join a game of jack stones with
Mattie Harrison and another little girl who had not been on the bus.
Her name was Flora Gabrie. Catherine Gould walked up and down the yard
with her arm around one of the older girls and seemed to be listening
intently to what she was saying.
“That’s Lenora Miller,” said Mattie, pointing to the older girl.
“Catherine Gould thinks everything Lenora says is just right. I
shouldn’t wonder if Lenora gets herself invited to Catherine’s party.”
“Is she going to give a party?” asked Elizabeth Ann, who could ask
questions and scoop up jack stones at the same time.
“Catherine is always giving parties,” Mattie informed her. “She lives
in a great big house, and her mother lets her do anything she pleases.”
The bell rang for the end of recess just then, and the rest of the
morning Elizabeth Ann was too busy trying to learn to write nicely, to
think much about parties, or girls whose mothers allowed them to do
anything they pleased.
Mattie had explained to Elizabeth Ann and Doris about the lunch hour.
In the winter she said, there was a large, warm, light room in the
basement with tables, where the pupils ate their lunches. But as long
as the weather remained warm and pleasant--as it usually did throughout
September--the children were supposed to eat their lunches outdoors.
“Miss Owen,” Mattie had explained, “is crazy about fresh air.”
At noon, when the bell rang, Elizabeth Ann was starving. She was sure
she had never been so hungry before in her life.
“Come on, we have to hurry, or we don’t get a tree,” said Mattie, who
certainly knew all about school.
Elizabeth Ann grasped her lunch box and caught hold of Doris’s hand.
“Hurry!” she said, and helter skelter across the play ground they ran,
to a row of apple trees that were behind the building.
Boys and girls were climbing into these trees--you know an apple tree
is close to the ground and easy to climb--and though Elizabeth Ann and
Mattie both had to tug and pull Doris, to get her up into the tree,
they all agreed, once they were settled, that it was a lovely place to
eat lunch.
They could look out through the branches, and the way the limbs of the
tree grew sitting in it was as easy as sitting in a comfortable rocking
chair.
“Hello!” called Roger Calendar, leaning out from the tree next to the
one where Elizabeth Ann and Doris and Mattie were perched.
“Hello!” Mattie answered. “Did you see your writing that Miss Owen
pinned up on the board?”
Roger blushed and ducked behind a convenient branch.
“Are you on a diet, Roger?” Catherine Gould called to him. “Are you
afraid you’re getting too fat?”
Catherine sat on the grass, eating her lunch with several of the
grammar grade pupils. Catherine never would climb a tree, Mattie
whispered to Elizabeth Ann. She said that only boys liked to climb
trees.
“Why, I like to climb ’em,” said Elizabeth Ann, meaning the trees. “So
does Doris, though she can’t climb a very high tree. Lots of girls like
to climb trees.”
“Of course they do,” Mattie agreed. “Catherine only says that, because
she doesn’t like to climb trees. And she’s mad because Roger’s writing
was the best in the class this morning, and Miss Owen pinned it on the
board. When Catherine is mad you can always tell--she says some mean
thing.”
“Why--what did she say that was mean?” asked Elizabeth Ann, not
understanding.
“Oh, that about asking Roger if he was dieting to keep from getting too
fat,” Mattie explained. “Poor Roger gets only two sandwiches for his
lunch. He’s almost always hungry. The Bostwicks don’t think he needs
much to eat--my mother says they don’t eat much themselves, and they
forget when a boy is growing he needs plenty to eat. Roger can eat his
lunch in two minutes and it’s mean of Catherine to ask him if he’s
afraid of getting fat. He’s the thinnest boy in school now.”
Yes, Elizabeth Ann could see that kind of thing was unkind for
Catherine to say. You couldn’t excuse her, either, by telling yourself
that she didn’t know about Roger. Catherine lived near Roger and knew
all about him--that he was a “taken boy” and dependent upon the people
for whom he worked for his food and clothing. There was every reason in
the world why Catherine Gould, with a father and mother and a lovely
home should have been kind to Roger who had nothing he could call his
own.
“But she is so pretty, she must be nice,” Elizabeth Ann argued,
tumbling out of the tree to have a game of tag before the bell should
ring. “Catherine is pretty and she has lovely dresses; I don’t believe
she knows when she is being mean to Roger.”