He was the more eager to learn things for the reason that Mrs. Tollivant had declared him backward. In the primary school Cilly was in the second grade; he must go into the first. He would be with children a year younger than himself. But the humiliation would be an incentive to ambition. He had already decided that only by "knowing things" should he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate.
The school session was all he had hoped for. Miss Pollard, the teacher, put in touch with his story by Mrs. Tollivant, kept him near to her, and watched over him. He learned to discriminate between his, has, and had, as matters of orthography, as well as between cat, car, and can. That twice two made four and twice four made eight added much to his understanding of numbers. He sang Roving the Old Homeland, while Miss Pollard pointed on the map to the places as they were named.
From Plymouth town to Plymouth town
The Pilgrims made their way;
The Puritans settled Salem,
And Boston on the Bay.
The air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for the inclusion of any reasonable number of redundant syllables.
The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam,
Where the blue waters fork;
The English came and conquered it,
And turned it into New York.
A little history, a little geography, being taught by the simple method of doggerel, much pleasure was evoked by the exercise of healthy lungs. Listening to her new pupil, Miss Pollard discovered a sweet treble that had never before been aware of itself, with a linnet's joy in piping. A linnet's joy was his joy throughout the whole morning, with no more than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of two hours in the Tollivant home before he came back for the afternoon.
As Cilly called for Bertie at the kindergarten, he walked homeward by himself. Happy with a happiness never experienced before, he had not noticed that his school-mates hung away from him, tittering as he passed. To well-dressed little boys and girls his worn old cap, his frayed knickerbockers, and above all his cheap gray overcoat with a stringy sheepskin collar, naturally marked him for derision. They would have marked him for derision even had his story not been known to everyone.
He went singing on his way, stepping manfully to the measure.
The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam,
Where the blue waters fork;
The English came and conquered it,
And turned it into New York.