“What is it that clutches at your throat, little one?” he asked.
Betty looked surprised as she replied, “Why, nothing, really, I suppose!”
“That’s just it,” Uncle George said earnestly. “People call it fear, but it is nothing. What is there to be afraid of? Since you know how to spell the word, all that you have to do is to spell it. And even if you misspell it, no harm is done. The word will always remain, and you can learn it at another time. Courage is the quality that I want my Betsy Bobbets to cultivate,—courage and fearlessness.”
“Oh, Uncle George!” Betty exclaimed, more like her bright self. “I am so glad that you have talked to me this way. I feel ever so much braver. I guess that all I am really afraid of is that I shall lose the pony.”
How Uncle George wanted to tell her that she should have the pony, come what might, but he decided that perhaps it would be better for her character-development if he left things as they were.
A few moments later Betty danced into the dining-room. Her mother, who was putting away the silver, glanced up anxiously. She hoped that her brother George had told Betty that she need not take the examinations, and she was convinced that this was so when Betty exclaimed gayly, “Oh, Mumsie, where’s my chocolate pudding and whipped cream? I’m so hungry for it!”
“It’s in the china-closet, dear. I thought that you might want it later,” the mother replied. And then, while Betty was eating the pudding with her old appreciation, Mrs. Burd asked, “Are you glad that you aren’t going to take the examinations, Betty?”
“But I am going to take them, mumsie dear, and you will be so proud of me when I bring home a card marked ‘perfect’ in grammar and spelling.”
Mrs. Burd was indeed puzzled, but she said no more just then. The girls, too, noticed the change in Betty, and then one morning, under the elm-tree, Peggy Pierce chanted dolefully, “And this is the day of the final examinations. They mean to find out how little I know.”
“Oh-h!” moaned Rosamond. “I’m scared stiff.”