“Yes. I showed it to mine after she promised not to tell any one about it; and you could show it to yours if she promised.”
School was no longer monotonous. It was a kind of fairyland where all sorts of marvelous things were happening. Ella looked back with disdain upon her days at the seminary and even at the “Private School for Young Ladies.” If they had lasted all her life, there would never have been anything so thrilling as this. There was no doubt now that she was within the circle to stay.
This is a true copy of the Tories’ Alphabet.
A B C D E F G H I J
K L M N O P Q R S T
U V W X Y Z &
* # + [plus various other symbols]
The sudden change that the revealing of this secret produced was a vast relief to the troubled mind of the teacher. There was no more making of dolls, no more folding of kindergarten papers. The tiny bottles of mucilage disappeared, and never once was a pair of scissors heard to fall upon the floor. Walk back of the atlas when you would, there was nothing to be seen—if you did not come too near—but writing books and scraps of paper whereupon a little girl with unusually poor handwriting was apparently trying her best in her spare time to improve it.
In their mysterious alphabet the two children wrote notes innumerable to each other, and even copied long poems, and they might easily have taken up another study in the time that they gave to it. The teacher knew of course that something was going on, but it was such a relief to have them even apparently at work that she did not open her eyes any wider than was absolutely necessary.
The end of the second term was at hand, and those who stood well in the Second Room were to be promoted to the First Room. Ella was to go. It was an honor to be promoted, but when the reports were given out, she went home with a sober face and lagging steps. Her percentage was 90, and her stand in the class was Number One for the half term. The trouble was with the deportment. Much as the teacher liked her, she could not fairly give her an “Excellent.” The first half of the term was marked “Good,” and the second—which began about the time of the revelation of the secret—was “Very good.” But that was not “Excellent,” and the mother had told her that, although a child might not always be able to take a high stand in her class, she could always be “Excellent” in deportment. The time of reckoning had come.
“Was there anything to prevent you from behaving well?” asked the mother.
“I did behave well four days out of every five, and sometimes others,” Ella replied. “I might have been a good deal worse. I might have had an ‘Unsatisfactory’ in deportment and in any one of the seven studies, or even in all of them, and I didn’t; I only had a ‘Very good’ in just one thing. I don’t think that was bad at all. Anyway, I couldn’t help it.”