“I guess because I was so interested and was listening hard, and, besides, I knew that Uncle George was right. I had not expected to be promoted this year, and so I had not really tried to learn the term’s work.”
“I believe that you could do it,” Adele remarked. “We should be sorry to be promoted and leave our little one behind. Now our plan is to review the entire term’s work, and if we go over and over it with Betty, we shall also be impressing the lessons more firmly on our own minds.”
“Then you think that I could do it?” Betty asked eagerly.
“Of course you can,” Adele replied confidently, as she opened a speller. “You all sit in a row and we will play school, the way we used to do, and we’ll take turns being the teacher. Now, Betty, don’t you mind if you make mistakes, but just listen and listen, and you will be surprised how much you will learn.”
Then followed a busy hour, and a robin, alighting for a moment on the door-sill, wondered why girls could stay within on such a perfect June day. But what could a robin know of examinations only three weeks away?
When at last the girls were sauntering across the meadows on their homeward way, Betty exclaimed joyously, “Girls, I’ve learned more to-day than in a whole month at school.”
“That’s because you put your mind on it, little one,” Gertrude replied. “I have always felt that you could do much better if you really wanted to.”
Suddenly Betty laughed gleefully. “Won’t Miss Donovan be surprised,” she chuckled, “if to-morrow in class I should happen to spell a word correctly? She says that I can think up more wrong ways to spell a word than any one she ever met.”
As Betty had prophesied, Miss Donovan was indeed surprised to hear a constantly improved recitation from that young lady, but little did she dream of the hours and hours that were spent by that once heedless girl in poring over spellers and grammars.
One morning when the girls met under the elm tree, Doris Drexel announced, “Only ten more days before the final examinations.”