“Not quite so many syllables in that word,” cautioned her mother. “It is encyclopædia. I think the daddies belong to the spider family, and you can probably find out about them in the volume which has the article on spiders.”
“We called him Stilty,” Elizabeth informed her mother, “because he looked just as if he were walking on stilts.”
“That was a very good name,” agreed her mother. “I think you have material enough for a very good theme, so you’d better go ahead and write it while it is fresh in your mind.”
“I must hunt up spiders in the encyclopædia first,” said Elizabeth, and was soon poring over the article she wanted.
She did not say anything to Betsy about her theme, but to her great joy it was a success, for Miss Jewett praised it before the whole school. “I am going to read you the most original theme which has been handed in,” she told her pupils. “I want you to see how easy it is to find interesting subjects close at hand. One doesn’t have to go to Europe to find originality, doesn’t have to hunt in Africa to discover something unfamiliar. You will all laugh when I tell you this is the story of Stilty, a Daddy-long-legs, and I can assure you I smiled when I read the title, but it told me things I didn’t know and so I am sure it will you.”
A snicker did go around the schoolroom, but the title sounded promising and the children listened with their best attention. Elizabeth sat with eyes cast down, feeling very proud, yet a trifle embarrassed. Never before had she been so honored as to have a writing of hers read in public. No doubt Miss Jewett did not want her to feel too much puffed up, for when she had finished reading she said: “Of course this is by no means a model theme, for there are faults in spelling and punctuation, and you would find a great deal to correct if you were to criticise it. I commend it simply for its originality.”
When the paper was handed back to Elizabeth she did find plenty of red pencil marks which called her attention to mistakes, but she was quite exalted, nevertheless, and Betsy was not long in making it known that no one but Elizabeth could have written the theme.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” she said, as they walked home together, “I am so proud of you, and to think you took our poor little Stilty and made such a fine story of him. Why couldn’t I have thought of it? It happened in my own room and I knew it just as well as you, but I wasn’t smart enough to find out what a good story it would make.”
“I wasn’t quite sure whether it would be best to take that or another subject,” Elizabeth told her, “but when I told mother about Stilty she advised me to write about him, and now I am glad I did.”
“What was the other?”