Then Miss Lucy would close the green spelling book, with a gratified smile, and gather us about her in a little hushed circle, and tell us the tales of a bygone age. I liked Miss Lucy. I liked to sit up close to her and to Grace, and hear about the party dress, and the pink coral beads, and when it all ended happily, as stories should, I would give a great sigh of satisfaction.
"Dear me," Miss Lucy would say, all aglow with enthusiasm, "it's time for recess! Why, where has the morning gone! Well, girls, you'll have to take the same lesson over again for to-morrow."
She was very simple minded, Miss Lucy was, and she understood the situation just as little as I did myself.
Janet McLarin was Scotch, and she was canny. She could do every sum in the arithmetic; but when the day came for compositions she would put her bright head down in her lap and groan.
"I wish I was dead," she would say, despairingly. "I do! I do!"
Cebelia was more stoical; but she would fold great pleats in her apron, and frown at the blackboard. Miss Lucy always wrote the subjects for the compositions on the blackboard, one under the other, beautifully written out for our decision.
The Story of a Nine-pin.
Thoughts on Spring.
The Triumph of Columbus.
My Mother's Flower Garden.
A Meadow Daisy.
The Beauty of Truth.
They were lovely, lovely subjects! I would sit and look at them in a blissful dream.
One day, the very first composition day, I remember Grace gave me a little shake.
"Which one are you going to take?" she demanded, dolefully.