“Tommy’s just going to school, you know, and he’s beginning to ask questions. I guess he stumps his teachers in the primary grade. He heard the arithmetic class reciting and learned that only things of the same denomination can be subtracted from each other.
“‘Now, you know that ain’t so, Alice,’ says he to me. ‘For, can’t you take four quarts of milk from three cows?’”
Jess didn’t feel like laughing; what was coming after recess troubled her. She felt a certainty that she would fail, and she could not get over it.
“Besides,” she said to herself, “Gee Gee will put the hardest questions on the list to me—I just know she will.”
“What’s the matter, Jess?” asked Laura, coming up to her and squeezing her arm. “Something is troubling you, honey.”
“And it will trouble you after recess,” replied Jess, mournfully.
“The old exams?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Afraid, are you?” laughed Mother Wit.
“I’m just scared to death. And Gee Gee knows I’m not prepared and she will be down on me like a hawk.”