CHAPTER X.
HOME-LESSONS AND JACK-O'-LANTERNS.
It was hard for the Little Colonel to start back to school after her long holiday. Hard, in the first place, because she was a month behind her classes, and had extra home-lessons to learn. Hard, in the second place, because a more gorgeous October had never been known in the Valley, and all out-doors called to her to come and play. In the lanes the sumach flamed crimson, and in the avenues the maples turned gold. In the woods, where the nuts were dropping all day long, the dogwood-trees hung out their coral berries, and every beech and sweet gum put on a glory of its own.
"Oh, mothah, I can't study," Lloyd declared one afternoon. "I don't care whethah the Amazon Rivah rises in South America or the South Pole; an' I think those old Mexicans were horrid to give their volcanoes an' things such terrible long names. They ought to have thought about the trouble they were makin' for all the poah children in the world who would have to learn to spell them. I nevah can learn Popocatepetl. Why didn't they call it something easy, like—like Crosspatch!" she added, closing her book with a bang. "That's the way it makes me feel, anyhow. It is going to take all afternoon to get this one lesson."
"THE PLAN WORKED LIKE A CHARM."
"Not if you put your mind on it. Your lips have been saying it over and over, but your thoughts seem to be miles away."
"But everything interrupts me," complained Lloyd. "The bumble-bees an' the woodpeckahs an' the jay-birds are all a-callin'. I'm goin' in the house an' sit on the stair steps an' put my fingahs in my yeahs. Maybe I can study bettah that way."
The plan worked like a charm. In less than ten minutes she was back again, glibly reciting her geography lesson. After that all her home-lessons were learned on the stairs, where no out-door sights and sounds could arrest her attention.