Mrs. Stoddard nodded, smiling down at the eager little face. “Indeed you will. ’twill be the best of changes for you. Like as not Elder Haven will teach thee to write.”
“I know my letters and can spell small words,” said Anne.
“I’ll teach thee to read if time allows,” answered Mrs. Stoddard. “Your Uncle Enos has a fine book of large print; ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ it’s named, and ’Tis of interest. We will begin on it for a lesson.”
That afternoon found Anne and Mrs. Stoddard busily picking cranberries on the bog beyond the maple grove. Jimmie Starkweather and Amos Cary were also picking there, and before the afternoon finished, Amanda appeared. She came near Anne to pick and soon asked if Anne was to go to Elder Haven’s school.
“Yes, indeed,” answered Anne, “and maybe I shall be taught writing, and then I can send a letter, if chance offers, to my father.”
“You are always talking and thinking about your father,” responded Amanda; “if he should want you to leave the Stoddards I suppose you would go in a minute.”
Anne’s face grew thoughtful. Never had she been so happy and well cared for as at the Stoddards’; to go to her father would perhaps mean that she would go hungry and half-clad as in the old days, but she remembered her father’s loneliness, how he had always tried to do all that he could for her, and she replied slowly, “I guess my father might need me more than Aunt Martha and Uncle Enos. They have each other, and my father has only me.”
Amanda asked no more questions, but she kept very close to Anne and watched her with a new interest.
“I wish I could read,” she said, as, their baskets well filled, the two girls walked toward home. “I don’t even know my letters.”
“I can teach you those,” said Anne eagerly. “I can teach you just as my dear father did me. We used to go out on the beach in front of our house and he would mark out the letters in the sand and tell me their names, and then I would mark them out. Sometimes we would make letters as long as I am tall. Would you like me to teach you?”