“I think I’d rather go to school,” Maida answered honestly.
“And what kind of a school?” Rosie kept it up.
“Oh the school you all go to—in Charlestown. I’d love that.”
“Oh how I wish your father would let you,” Rosie declared fervently. “Wouldn’t it be fun? But then you know all they could teach you there. You know geography and history and literature.”
“Oh but my arithmetic is dreadful,” Maida declared, “and my spelling, and father says he is perfectly ashamed of my writing.”
“But you speak French,” Laura said enviously, “and Italian!”
“A very little Italian,” Maida confessed.
“But you can read fairy tales in French,” Dicky said. “Oh what a lucky girl!”
“Yes, I do think I’m lucky in that,” Maida agreed with him.