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.
Cousin Ann, in a very short old skirt and a man’s coat and high rubber
boots, was just poking some more wood into the big fire which blazed
furiously under the broad, flat pan where the sap was boiling. The
rough, brown hut was filled with white steam and that sweetest of all
odors, hot maple syrup. Cousin Ann turned her head, her face very red
with the heat of the fire, and nodded at the child.
“Hello, Betsy, you’re just in time. I’ve saved out a cupful of hot syrup
for you, all ready to wax.”
Betsy hardly heard this, although she had been wild about waxed sugar on
snow ever since her very first taste of it. “Cousin Ann,” she said
unhappily, “the Superintendent visited our school this afternoon.”
“Did he!” said Cousin Ann, dipping a thermometer into the boiling syrup.
“Yes, and we had EXAMINATIONS!” said Betsy.
“Did you?” said Cousin Ann, holding the thermometer up to the light and
looking at it.
“And you know how perfectly awful examinations make you feel,” said
Betsy, very near to tears again.
“Why, no,” said Cousin Ann, sorting over syrup tins. “They never made me
feel awful. I thought they were sort of fun.”
“FUN!” cried Betsy, indignantly, staring through the beginnings of her
tears.
“Why, yes. Like taking a dare, don’t you know. Somebody stumps you to
jump off the hitching-post, and you do it to show ’em. I always used to
think examinations were like that. Somebody stumps you to spell
‘pneumonia,’ and you do it to show ’em. Here’s your cup of syrup. You’d
better go right out and wax it while it’s hot.”
Elizabeth Ann automatically took the cup in her hand, but she did not
look at it. “But supposing you get so scared you can’t spell ‘pneumonia’
or anything else!” she said feelingly. “That’s what happened to me. You
know how your mouth gets all dry and your knees ...” She stopped. Cousin
Ann had said she did NOT know all about those things. “Well, anyhow, I
got so scared I could hardly STAND up! And I made the most awful
mistakes—things I know just as WELL! I spelled ‘doubt’ without any b
and ‘separate’ with an e, and I said Iowa was bounded on the north by
Wisconsin, and I ...”
“Oh, well,” said Cousin Ann, “it doesn’t matter if you really know the
right answers, does it? That’s the important thing.”
This was an idea which had never in all her life entered Betsy’s brain
and she did not take it in at all now. She only shook her head miserably
and went on in a doleful tone. “And I said 13 and 8 are 22! and I wrote
March without any capital M, and I ...”
“Look here, Betsy, do you WANT to tell me all this?” Cousin Ann spoke in
the quick, ringing voice she had once in a while which made everybody,
from old Shep up, open his eyes and get his wits about him. Betsy
gathered hers and thought hard; and she came to an unexpected
conclusion. No, she didn’t really want to tell Cousin Ann all about it.
Why was she doing it? Because she thought that was the thing to do.
“Because if you don’t really want to,” went on Cousin Ann, “I don’t see
that it’s doing anybody any good. I guess Hemlock Mountain will stand
right there just the same even if you did forget to put a b in ‘doubt.’
And your syrup will be too cool to wax right if you don’t take it out
pretty soon.”
She turned back to stoke the fire, and Elizabeth Ann, in a daze, found
herself walking out of the door. It fell shut after her, and there she
was under the clear, pale-blue sky, with the sun just hovering over the
rim of Hemlock Mountain. She looked up at the big mountains, all blue
and silver with shadows and snow, and wondered what in the world Cousin
Ann had meant. Of course Hemlock Mountain would stand there just the
same. But what of it? What did that have to do with her arithmetic, with
anything? She had failed in her examination, hadn’t she?
She found a clean white snow-bank under a pine-tree, and, setting her
cup of syrup down in a safe place, began to pat the snow down hard to
make the right bed for the waxing of the syrup. The sun, very hot for
that late March day, brought out strongly the tarry perfume of the big
pine-tree. Near her the sap dripped musically into a bucket, already
half full, hung on a maple-tree. A blue-jay rushed suddenly through the
upper branches of the wood, his screaming and chattering voice sounding
like noisy children at play.
Elizabeth Ann took up her cup and poured some of the thick, hot syrup
out on the hard snow, making loops and curves as she poured. It
stiffened and hardened at once, and she lifted up a great coil of it,
threw her head back, and let it drop into her mouth. Concentrated
sweetness of summer days was in that mouthful, part of it still hot and
aromatic, part of it icy and wet with melting snow. She crunched it all
together with her strong, child’s teeth into a delicious, big lump and
sucked on it dreamily, her eyes on the rim of Hemlock Mountain, high
above her there, the snow on it bright golden in the sunlight. Uncle
Henry had promised to take her up to the top as soon as the snow went
off. She wondered what the top of a mountain would be like. Uncle Henry
had said the main thing was that you could see so much of the world at
once. He said it was too queer the way your own house and big barn and
great fields looked like little toy things that weren’t of any account.
It was because you could see so much more than just the....
She heard an imploring whine, and a cold nose was thrust into her hand!
Why, there was old Shep begging for his share of waxed sugar. He loved
it, though it did stick to his teeth so! She poured out another lot and
gave half of it to Shep. It immediately stuck his jaws together tight,
and he began pawing at his mouth and shaking his head till Betsy had to
laugh. Then he managed to pull his jaws apart and chewed loudly and
visibly, tossing his head, opening his mouth wide till Betsy could see
the sticky, brown candy draped in melting festoons all over his big
white teeth and red gullet. Then with a gulp he had swallowed it all
down and was whining for more, striking softly at the little girl’s
skirt with his forepaw. “Oh, you eat it too fast!” cried Betsy, but she
shared her next lot with him too. The sun had gone down over Hemlock
Mountain by this time, and the big slope above her was all deep blue
shadow. The mountain looked much higher now as the dusk began to fall,
and loomed up bigger and bigger as though it reached to the sky. It was
no wonder houses looked small from its top. Betsy ate the last of her
sugar, looking up at the quiet giant there, towering grandly above her.
There was no lump in her throat now. And, although she still thought she
did not know what in the world Cousin Ann meant by saying that about
Hemlock Mountain and her examination, it’s my opinion that she had made
a very good beginning of an understanding.
She was just picking up her cup to take it back to the sap-house when
Shep growled a little and stood with his ears and tail up, looking down
the road. Something was coming down that road in the blue, clear
twilight, something that was making a very queer noise. It sounded
almost like somebody crying. It WAS somebody crying! It was a child
crying. It was a little, little girl.... Betsy could see her
now ... stumbling along and crying as though her heart would break. Why,
it was little Molly, her own particular charge at school, whose reading
lesson she heard every day. Betsy and Shep ran to meet her. “What’s the
matter, Molly? What’s the matter?” Betsy knelt down and put her arms
around the weeping child. “Did you fall down? Did you hurt you? What are
you doing ’way off here? Did you lose your way?”
“I don’t want to go away! I don’t want to go away!” said Molly over and
over, clinging tightly to Betsy. It was a long time before Betsy could
quiet her enough to find out what had happened. Then she made out
between Molly’s sobs that her mother had been taken suddenly sick and
had to go away to a hospital, and that left nobody at home to take care
of Molly, and she was to be sent away to some strange relatives in the
city who didn’t want her at all and who said so right out....
Oh, Elizabeth Ann knew all about that! and her heart swelled big with
sympathy. For a moment she stood again out on the sidewalk in front of
the Lathrop house with old Mrs. Lathrop’s ungracious white head bobbing
from a window, and knew again that ghastly feeling of being unwanted.
Oh, she knew why little Molly was crying! And she shut her hands
together hard and made up her mind that she WOULD help her out!
[Illustration: “What’s the matter, Molly? What’s the matter?”]
Do you know what she did, right off, without thinking about it? She
didn’t go and look up Aunt Abigail. She didn’t wait till Uncle Henry
came back from his round of emptying sap buckets into the big tub on his
sled. As fast as her feet could carry her she flew back to Cousin Ann in
the sap-house. I can’t tell you (except again that Cousin Ann was Cousin
Ann) why it was that Betsy ran so fast to her and was so sure that
everything would be all right as soon as Cousin Ann knew about it; but
whatever the reason was it was a good one, for, though Cousin Ann did
not stop to kiss Molly or even to look at her more than one sharp first
glance, she said after a moment’s pause, during which she filled a syrup
can and screwed the cover down very tight: “Well, if her folks will let
her stay, how would you like to have Molly come and stay with us till
her mother gets back from the hospital? Now you’ve got a room of your
own, I guess if you wanted to you could have her sleep with you.”
“Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly!” shouted Betsy, jumping up and down, and then
hugging the little girl with all her might. “Oh, it will be like having
a little sister!”
Cousin Ann sounded a dry, warning note: “Don’t be too sure her folks
will let her. We don’t know about them yet.”
Betsy ran to her, and caught her hand, looking up at her with shining
eyes. “Cousin Ann, if YOU go to see them and ask them, they will!”
This made even Cousin Ann give a little abashed smile of pleasure,
although she made her face grave again at once and said: “You’d better
go along back to the house now, Betsy. It’s time for you to help Mother
with the supper.”
The two children trotted back along the darkening wood road, Shep
running before them, little Molly clinging fast to the older child’s
hand. “Aren’t you ever afraid, Betsy, in the woods this way?” she asked
admiringly, looking about her with timid eyes.
“Oh, no!” said Betsy, protectingly; “there’s nothing to be afraid of,
except getting off on the wrong fork of the road, near the Wolf Pit.”
“Oh, OW!” said Molly, cringing. “What’s the Wolf Pit? What an awful
name!”
Betsy laughed. She tried to make her laugh sound brave like Cousin
Ann’s, which always seemed so scornful of being afraid. As a matter of
fact, she was beginning to fear that they HAD made the wrong turn, and
she was not quite sure that she could find the way home. But she put
this out of her mind and walked along very fast, peering ahead into the
dusk. “Oh, it hasn’t anything to do with wolves,” she said in answer to
Molly’s question; “anyhow, not now. It’s just a big, deep hole in the
ground where a brook had dug out a cave.... Uncle Henry told me all
about it when he showed it to me ... and then part of the roof caved in;
sometimes there’s ice in the corner of the covered part all the summer,
Aunt Abigail says.”
“Why do you call it the Wolf Pit?” asked Molly, walking very close to
Betsy and holding very tightly to her hand.
“Oh, long, ever so long ago, when the first settlers came up here, they
heard a wolf howling all night, and when it didn’t stop in the morning,
they came up here on the mountain and found a wolf had fallen in and
couldn’t get out.”
“My! I hope they killed him!” said Molly.
“Oh, gracious! that was more than a hundred years ago,” said Betsy. She
was not thinking of what she was saying. She was thinking that if they
WERE on the right road they ought to be home by this time. She was
thinking that the right road ran down hill to the house all the way, and
that this certainly seemed to be going up a little. She was wondering
what had become of Shep. “Stand here just a minute, Molly,” she said. “I
want ... I just want to go ahead a little bit and see ... and see ...” She
darted on around a curve of the road and stood still, her heart sinking.
The road turned there and led straight up the mountain!
For just a moment the little girl felt a wild impulse to burst out in a
shriek for Aunt Frances, and to run crazily away, anywhere so long as
she was running. But the thought of Molly standing back there,
trustfully waiting to be taken care of, shut Betsy’s lips together hard
before her scream of fright got out. She stood still, thinking. Now she
mustn’t get frightened. All they had to do was to walk back along the
road till they came to the fork and then make the right turn. But what
if they didn’t get back to the turn till it was so dark they couldn’t
see it...? Well, she mustn’t think of that. She ran back, calling, “Come
on, Molly,” in a tone she tried to make as firm as Cousin Ann’s. “I
guess we have made the wrong turn after all. We’d better ...”
But there was no Molly there. In the brief moment Betsy had stood
thinking, Molly had disappeared. The long, shadowy wood road held not a
trace of her.
Then Betsy WAS frightened and then she DID begin to scream, at the top
of her voice, “Molly! Molly!” She was beside herself with terror, and
started back hastily to hear Molly’s voice, very faint, apparently
coming from the ground under her feet.
“Ow! Ow! Betsy! Get me out! Get me out!”
“Where ARE you?” shrieked Betsy.
“I don’t know!” came Molly’s sobbing voice. “I just moved the least
little bit out of the road, and slipped on the ice and began to slide
and I couldn’t stop myself and I fell down into a deep hole!”
Betsy’s head felt as though her hair were standing up straight on end
with horror. Molly must have fallen down into the Wolf Pit! Yes, they
were quite near it. She remembered now that big white-birch tree stood
right at the place where the brook tumbled over the edge and fell into
it. Although she was dreadfully afraid of falling in herself, she went
cautiously over to this tree, feeling her way with her foot to make sure
she did not slip, and peered down into the cavernous gloom below. Yes,
there was Molly’s little face, just a white speck. The child was crying,
sobbing, and holding up her arms to Betsy.
“Are you hurt, Molly?”
“No. I fell into a big snow-bank, but I’m all wet and frozen and I want
to get out! I want to get out!”
Betsy held on to the birch-tree. Her head whirled. What SHOULD she do!
“Look here, Molly,” she called down, “I’m going to run back along to the
right road and back to the house and get Uncle Henry. He’ll come with a
rope and get you out!”
At this Molly’s crying rose to a frantic scream. “Oh, Betsy, don’t leave
me here alone! Don’t! Don’t! The wolves will get me! Betsy, DON’T leave
me alone!” The child was wild with terror.
“But I CAN’T get you out myself!” screamed back Betsy, crying herself.
Her teeth were chattering with the cold.
“Don’t go! Don’t go!” came up from the darkness of the pit in a piteous
howl. Betsy made a great effort and stopped crying. She sat down on a
stone and tried to think. And this is what came into her mind as a
guide: “What would Cousin Ann do if she were here? She wouldn’t cry. She
would THINK of something.”
Betsy looked around her desperately. The first thing she saw was the big
limb of a pine-tree, broken off by the wind, which half lay and half
slantingly stood up against a tree a little distance above the mouth of
the pit. It had been there so long that the needles had all dried and
fallen off, and the skeleton of the branch with the broken stubs looked
like ... yes, it looked like a ladder! THAT was what Cousin Ann would have
done!
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute, Molly!” she called wildly down the pit,
warm all over in excitement. “Now listen. You go off there in a corner,
where the ground makes a sort of roof. I’m going to throw down something
you can climb up on, maybe.”
“Ow! Ow, it’ll hit me!” cried poor little Molly, more and more
frightened. But she scrambled off under her shelter obediently, while
Betsy struggled with the branch. It was so firmly imbedded in the snow
that at first she could not budge it at all. But after she cleared that
away and pried hard with the stick she was using as a lever she felt it
give a little. She bore down with all her might, throwing her weight
again and again on her lever, and finally felt the big branch
perceptibly move. After that it was easier, as its course was down hill
over the snow to the mouth of the pit. Glowing, and pushing, wet with
perspiration, she slowly maneuvered it along to the edge, turned it
squarely, gave it a great shove, and leaned over anxiously. Then she
gave a great sigh of relief! Just as she had hoped, it went down sharp
end first and stuck fast in the snow which had saved Molly from broken
bones. She was so out of breath with her work that for a moment she
could not speak. Then, “Molly, there! Now I guess you can climb up to
where I can reach you.”
Molly made a rush for any way out of her prison, and climbed, like the
little practiced squirrel that she was, up from one stub to another to
the top of the branch. She was still below the edge of the pit there,
but Betsy lay flat down on the snow and held out her hands. Molly took
hold hard, and, digging her toes into the snow, slowly wormed her way up
to the surface of the ground.
It was then, at that very moment, that Shep came bounding up to them,
barking loudly, and after him Cousin Ann striding along in her rubber
boots, with a lantern in her hand and a rather anxious look on her face.
She stopped short and looked at the two little girls, covered with snow,
their faces flaming with excitement, and at the black hole gaping behind
them. “I always TOLD Father we ought to put a fence around that pit,”
she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Some day a sheep’s going to fall
down there. Shep came along to the house without you, and we thought
most likely you’d taken the wrong turn.”
Betsy felt terribly aggrieved. She wanted to be petted and praised for
her heroism. She wanted Cousin Ann to REALIZE ... oh, if Aunt Frances were
only there, SHE would realize...!
“I fell down in the hole, and Betsy wanted to go and get Mr. Putney, but
I wouldn’t let her, and so she threw down a big branch and I climbed
out,” explained Molly, who, now that her danger was past, took Betsy’s
action quite as a matter of course.
“Oh, that was how it happened,” said Cousin Ann. She looked down the
hole and saw the big branch, and looked back and saw the long trail of
crushed snow where Betsy had dragged it. “Well, now, that was quite a
good idea for a little girl to have,” she said briefly. “I guess you’ll
do to take care of Molly all right!”
She spoke in her usual voice and immediately drew the children after
her, but Betsy’s heart was singing joyfully as she trotted along
clasping Cousin Ann’s strong hand. Now she knew that Cousin Ann
realized.... She trotted fast, smiling to herself in the darkness.
“What made you think of doing that?” asked Cousin Ann presently, as they
approached the house.
“Why, I tried to think what YOU would have done if you’d been there,”
said Betsy.
“Oh!” said Cousin Ann. “Well ...”
She didn’t say another word, but Betsy, glancing up into her face as
they stepped into the lighted room, saw an expression that made her give
a little skip and hop of joy. She had PLEASED Cousin Ann.
That night, as she lay in her bed, her arm over Molly cuddled up warm
beside her, she remembered, oh, ever so faintly, as something of no
importance, that she had failed in an examination that afternoon.