Little Maid Marian

by Amy Ella Blanchard

Instead of sitting in a straight-backed chair in her grandfather's study, conning over dry lessons while Mr. Otway wrote or read, it was quite a different experience for Marian to go to school to Miss Dorothy in a cheerful little schoolhouse where twenty other girls were seated each before her particular desk. Lessons with Grandpa Otway had been very stupid, for he required literal, word-for-word, gotten-by-heart pages, had no mercy upon faulty spelling, and frowned down mistakes in arithmetic examples. He did not make much of a point of writing, for he wrote a queer, scratchy hand himself, and so Marian could scarcely form her letters legibly, a fact of which she was made ashamed when she saw how well Ruth Deering wrote, and discovered that Marjorie Stone sent a letter every week to her brother at college.

However, the rest of it was such an improvement upon other years, that every morning Marian started out very happily, book bag on arm, and Miss Dorothy by her side. The first day was the most eventful, of course, and the child was in a quiver of excitement. Her teacher was perhaps not less nervous, though she did not show it except by the two red spots upon her cheeks. It was her first day as teacher as well as Marian's, as one of a class in school. But all passed off well, the twenty little girls with shining faces and fresh frocks were expectant and the new teacher quite came up to their hopes. Marian already knew Ruth Deering and Marjorie Stone, for they were in her Sunday-school class, and some of the others she had seen at church. Alice Evans sat with her parents just in front of the Otways' pew, so her flaxen pig-tails were a familiar sight, while Minnie Keating's big brown bow of ribbon appeared further along on Sunday mornings.

Marian felt that she did quite as well as the other girls in most things, and was beginning to congratulate herself upon knowing as much as any one of her age, when she was called to the blackboard to write out a sentence. At her feeble effort which resulted in a crooked scrawl, there was a subdued titter from the others. For one moment the new scholar stood, her cheeks flaming, then with defiant face she turned to Miss Dorothy. "I can spell it every word," she said, "if I can't write it."

Miss Dorothy smiled encouragingly, for she understood the situation. "That is more than many little girls of your age can do," she said. "Suppose you spell it for us, then."

With clenched hands Marian faced her schoolmates. "Separate syllables, and enunciate with distinct emphasis," she finished triumphantly, without looking at the book.

"That is a very good test," said Miss Dorothy; "you may take your seat. Now, Alice, I will give out the next sentence, and you may spell it without the board," and the day was saved for Marian.

After this she triumphantly gave the boundaries of several countries, told without hesitation the dates of three important events in history, carried to a correct finish a difficult example in long division, and when the hour came for school to close she had won her place. Yet the matter of writing was uppermost in her mind as she walked home, and she said shamefacedly to Miss Dorothy, "Isn't it dreadful for a girl of my age not to know how to write?"

"It isn't as if it were a thing that couldn't be learned," Miss Dorothy told her for her encouragement, "but you must hurry up and conquer it. You might practice at home between times, and you will be surprised to find how you improve. Have you never written letters to your father?"

Marian shook her head. "Not really myself. Grandma always writes them for me," then she added, "so of course she says just what she pleases; I'd like to say what I please, I think."

"I am sure your father would like it better if you did. I know when my father was away from home the letter that most pleased him was written by my little sister Patty when she was younger than you."