Then the reading-hour began and Miss Bayley suggested the much-loved story of Cinderella. Each pupil, sufficiently advanced, read two pages, and, as the special fairy-tale reader was passed about, it at last came to Carol. When that little maid was seated again, Miss Bayley smilingly said, “Perhaps our little guest will read a page to us.”
No longer afraid, that small girl willingly read the story, with which she was familiar, and a flush of pleasure appeared in her pale face when the kind teacher said encouragingly, “You read very well indeed, Sylvia, just as though you were telling something that really had happened.”
The old grandfather’s clock was soon chiming ten, and then the pupils flocked out into the golden October day, where Sylvia, for the very first time in her short life, found herself actually playing games with children who were not from the best families.
Maggie Mullet caught her hand in a ring-around game, and at another time Sylvia actually chose Mercedes Guadalupe for a partner in a hide-and-seek game.
That noon found the small girl, whose chief diet had been candy and cake, so hungry that she gladly accepted the thick sandwich offered by Dixie, and ate it almost as ravenously as did Ken. It was during the lunch hour that Miss Bayley beckoned to Dixie from the open door of the log schoolhouse. Excusing herself, the glad-eyed little girl bounded away from the others, wondering what dear teacher had to tell her,—some plan, she was sure, for Carol’s birthday “s’prise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
KEN’S TALK WITH TEACHER
A week passed, and what a week crowded with wonderful events it had been.
November came, in the same golden glory that October had gone out.
“Doesn’t winter ever come to your mountain country?” the teacher asked Ken one day, and the lad, after searching the soft, hazy blue of the sky for a threatening cloud, shook his head. “There’ll be winter enough soon, Miss Bayley,” he said, as one who knew from the experience of having lived through fourteen of those blizzardous seasons. Then the lad was silent as he trudged along by the side of the young woman whom he so admired. It was Friday afternoon, and the boy was “packing” the books for teacher.
“A bright new penny for your thoughts, Ken,” Miss Bayley suddenly exclaimed. They had reached her doorstep, and she held out her hand for the packet he was carrying.