“Ella,” said the mother, “the doctors say that often when children seem to be naughty, it is because they are nervously tired and need more sleep. I think the thing to do will be for you to go to bed at eight o’clock every night for the next month. Then you will be rested enough to behave well when you go into the First Room.”
Now one of the girls was to have a party during the next month, and two days of Beejay’s week’s vacation came within its limits. Then, too, this punishment touched her pocketbook seriously. She had never had for a Sunday school teacher a milliner who would give her bits of ribbon, but she did have one at that moment who kept a pretty little fancy store. She was glad of all the mittens that Ella could crochet, and the little girl was becoming quite a capitalist on the proceeds. She had planned many nice things to do with the money that she expected to make; and now there would be no time for anything but her lessons, and when the month was over, it would be too late for mittens.
She had one big cry, then she accepted the situation. One comfort was that the “month” was February and that it was not leap year. Another was that when the day came for her to move into the First Room, the young teacher forgot that she was a teacher and a graduate of the State normal school. She put her arm around the child and said,
“Ella, if you only wouldn’t play quite so much, I would not ask for a better scholar—and anyway, play or no play, you are a dear little girl, and I wish you were my own small sister.”
CHAPTER XIV
AMONG THE “WELL-BEHAVED ANGELS”
The class to be promoted met as usual in the Second Room, and with their books marched into the First Room. Besides the glory of the promotion, Ella’s dignity had another foundation, namely, that she was thoroughly up to date in her equipment. Her smoothly sliding slate pencil that worked like a gold one had not yet been surpassed by any new invention, but the large slate was quite behind the times. The proper thing now was to have what was apparently a book about the size of her arithmetic and grammar, but made up of four small slates, of real slate, but thin and light, and with slender wooden frames. The binding of Ella’s was of a bright, cheery shade of blue, and on the outside was printed in gilt, with a large Spencerian flourish, “Notes.”
The slate was enough to give elegance to her outfit, but the crowning touch of distinction was her book-carrier. Bags had long before gone out of use, if indeed they had ever been in use in that city. The informal court of school girls had decided some time before this that a strap buckled around a little pile of books would do very well for boys, but was not in the best taste for their sisters. Moreover, the strap jammed the edges of the books, and this was an argument against it which was not without force at home, for even in families of little education a schoolbook was an article to be tenderly cared for.
Books were not provided by the city and showered into the hands of pupils to be used or abused according to disposition and home training, or lack of training, and then tossed to the following class. They were to be bought, sometimes with self-denial on the part of children or their parents, to be neatly covered with light brown paper or sometimes with some well-wearing color of calico, and treated with respect. A new book was an acquisition, an article of value to have and to hold. Usually the child’s name and the date of its purchase were written on the flyleaf, often, by special request, in the handwriting of the teacher. Books were used for a long time. With all the glory of promotion to the First Room, only two new books were to be bought. The same geography, grammar, speller, and arithmetic were to serve for the two years before going to the high school.
To carry these precious volumes a new article had recently been invented. The books were laid between two parallel pieces of wood with a strong cord running through holes at either end and wound up by a little wheel and ratchet under the handle. The slight snap that the wheel made in catching was exceedingly agreeable to the ears of little schoolgirl owners.
These carriers were not yet very common; but Ella had with considerable foresight and crocheting of mittens prepared for the future; and now when all the boys and most of the girls marched into the First Room with jagged armfuls of books and slates, Ella, and two or three others carried only neatly screwed up carriers carefully packed with the largest books at the bottom and the smallest at the top, especially when the smallest was a new notebook slate.