“In one way, yes. But there is a world of books to which your school training will open the door. To me, that world is everything, or was. I find—some other things—begin to interest me now.”
“What things, Grandmother?”
“No matter, little questioner; but things utterly different from any printed page.” When Madam Calthorp said anything that Steenie did not understand, the latter readily attributed it to the lady’s great “intelligence,” which she had now learned to call by its right name.
But, somehow, that little talk had set both old and young hearts to lighter beating; and Steenie departed kitchen-ward, feeling that “watching Mary Jane” was something interesting, even if it could not quite equal a race on the sands with Tito.
But of that beloved animal she dared not think often. It was apt to make a troublesome “ache” come “in her throat,” and it “didn’t do any good.”
On the following morning, feeling very curious and happy, Steenie entered the primary department of the great school for which Old Knollsboro was famous. She did not know that girls “going on eleven” usually disdained “primaries” as far beneath them, and she wouldn’t have cared if she had; but, at the first recess, she was enlightened on the subject by a young miss in braids, who remarked, patronizingly, “Oh, you’re the new girl, aren’t you?”
“I’m not new,—not very. I’m over ten.”
“What? I don’t mean new that way. You just came.”
“No. I have been here ever so long. Grandmother says ’bout three weeks.”
“Don’t you feel mad to go with the little ones?”