"I'm pretty sure I'm not failing anything at school," said Jerry.
"Glad to hear it. I thought you've looked lately as if something were worrying you. If your arithmetic is giving you trouble again, maybe I can give you a little help."
"Arithmetic's not so hard after you get the hang of it. I got a hundred in an arithmetic test day before yesterday."
"Good for you. Keep up the good work. I expect you to be good college material, you know, and that's not too many years ahead."
The words "college material" weighed Jerry's spirits. It seemed such a long stretch of school before he would be ready for college. And all that time he would be expected to do good work, good the rest of this term in order to be good in junior high, even better in junior high to be good in high school, and then you had to be a regular whiz on wheels in senior high to be good college material. So much excellence expected of him made Jerry feel tired.
"Guess I'll do the rest of this tomorrow morning before school," he said.
"Finish it now," ordered his father. "You know you never have time to do homework before school."
"Could be a first time," said Jerry, but he bent over his paper again. "What are the chief products of Central America?" he asked.
"That's rather a large question," said Mr. Martin. "Let's see."
While his father was calling to mind the products of Central America, Jerry was thinking of the pleasant fact that there were only a few more days before he could settle the bill at Bartlett's store. And what a relief it would be to have that charge account off his mind! Jerry thought how surprised his father would be if he knew the cause of his improvement in arithmetic. Jerry had not realized at first that all that adding and subtracting when he made change was helping his arithmetic, but now he could tell that he could add and subtract much faster. After bringing his mother the wrong change just once and having to pretend to go back to the store when he went only as far as Mr. Bullfinch's, Jerry had learned that it paid to be accurate.