“You know it takes some time to look over all those papers,” said the principal kindly, “but I will see that you know the results just as soon as possible. I came about the map. Have you forgotten about the map for which a prize was to be given?”
She had not forgotten, but prizes for maps seemed a very small matter to her now, and it really required a little effort to thank the principal as warmly as she thought he would expect. After he had gone, she opened the package rather indifferently. It contained a handsome copy of Æsop’s Fables. With its corners put into slits in the flyleaf was a card with her name and the date. She laid the book down, and wandered restlessly about the room. “Did you notice how queerly he looked at me?” she said to her mother. “He knows that some one else is ahead of me, and that is why he wouldn’t come in. He was very good to bring the book, but I don’t care one bit for it or for anything in it.” She took up the book indifferently and began to turn the leaves over; and behold, with the corners put into slits in a second flyleaf was another card, and on it was written, “Ella, 94 per cent average. Highest in the city.”
One day Ella heard the bell of the grammar school ringing faintly across the old cemetery, and she went down the path between the graves of the Revolutionary heroes to visit the school. The principal and the assistant gave her a warm welcome and a seat on the platform just as if she was a committee man. The pupils looked at her enviously, just as she used to look at the high school girls when they came back to visit. The big waste-basket stood near her. On top of the scraps of paper was a half-sheet, and on it was written a line or two in the “Tories’ Alphabet.” She wondered which of these children were “best friends” and had been admitted to the secret. New maps were on the board, not hers nor those of any of her class. A girl whom she had not especially liked was sitting in her old seat. A class from the Second Room had been promoted, and how young they did look! They were just babies!
ON IT WAS WRITTEN, “ELLA, 94 PER CENT AVERAGE. HIGHEST IN THE CITY”
“Aren’t those children from the Second Room a great deal younger than we were when we came in?” she asked.
The assistant smiled. She had heard that question before.
“Just the same average age,” she replied; “but you know that you have grown up. You are not a little girl any longer; you are a young lady of the high school.”
There was a lump in Ella’s throat. Something had gone out of her life. She was not “in it” any more—and “it” was her vanished childhood.
THE END