“A Boarder! A Boarder!”
His name is Mr. Lysle. He has a square, bland face, a portly presence, and a heavy artillery voice. It was Ernie who dubbed him “the Hippopotamus.” He has rented our three empty rooms at the biggest price we have yet received for them; and he and his wife and his sister will move in on Saturday! Oh, how beautiful!—that we should have been so “speedily helped and delivered.”
“My brave little Elizabeth,” said mother to me late this evening, “you have been such a comfort, such a support! But it is over now, dear. We will send to-morrow for Rose to come back. We will order furnace coal, and—we haven’t drawn on our bank account!”
Then she kissed me, and I blushed for very shame. For I have not been brave,—you know that, old diary,—at least not inside. How I wish that I might look back, and honestly feel that I have earned mother’s precious praise!
Friday, February 6.
School politics have been exciting these last few weeks, though in the stress and strain of home affairs I have had no time to report them. But Ernie has taken them very seriously, and for her sake we are glad the end has come. Yesterday the Sixth Grammar Grade was promoted, and the prize-winner’s name read aloud from the platform. Can you guess who it was?
Let me take the matter up where I dropped it. Though naturally much discouraged and depressed by her sudden fall from grace that fatal composition day, Ernie bravely determined to retrieve her shattered fortunes. In this resolve she was supported by Mary Hobart, Hatty Walker, and a host of other friends.
“It was nothing but a ghastly accident,” they urged, “helped along by Lulu Jennings; and, though, of course, a couple of failures will pull down your per cent., they need not entirely ruin it. You are cleverer than Lulu. Look at arithmetic alone, and the Visiting Board’s problems! She hasn’t solved one of them.”
“We can’t hold her entirely responsible for that,” returned Ernie, quaintly. “I am quite sure he never intended they should be solved.”
“But you have worked out answers to them,” retorted Mary.