“You’re going to school then,” said the little girl. “My mama teaches me, and some day she is going to send me to a big, big college.”
Mrs. Follet had been a school-teacher from the north in one of the small Kentucky towns, an orphan girl, who very young had been obliged to make her own way in the world. She had met Mr. Follet, and in one of those strange attractions between complete opposites in temperament and training, had married him. She was a quiet, refined and very kind-hearted woman. She would gladly have taught the boy, but finding that he did not know even his letters, she felt that with Nancy in the second reader, she could not take another pupil who was a beginner.
But when the lessons were going on in the evening 68 Steve soon began to spell over the words to himself as Nancy spelled them, and then it came about that often at odd times the brown shock of hair and the little yellow curls bent together over bits of paper, as the little girl pointed out and explained the make-up of the letters to the big boy.
“Don’t you see, Steve, this little chicken coop with a piece across it is big A, and this one with the piece standing up and two curly things at the side is big B.” The peculiarities of similar letters were discussed, how the bottom curly thing in big R turned the other way, while P didn’t have any bottom curly thing at all, and F didn’t have any bottom cross piece, while E did.
“See here,” said Steve, growing alert, “here’s a powerful nice gate; whut’s that?”
“Oh, that’s big H,” said Nancy, “and wriggly, twisty S is just the prettiest letter of all, I think. Oh, Steve, that is the letter which begins your name,” said she, in generous, childish joy.
“Is that so?” exclaimed Steve, with eager pleasure because she was pleased. “And which is the one whut begins yourn?”
“Oh, mine is just two straight standing up pieces with a slanting piece between. It’s one kind of a gate but not just like H,” and she hunted out an N to show him.
“I think that’s the prettiest letter of all,” said Steve, with unconscious gallantry. “Whar’s the other letters in yo’ name?” he inquired, and Nancy hunted them all out. Then she found the other letters in his name, and Steve had an undefined disappointment that his name did not have a single letter in it which belonged to her name. It seemed to shut him out more completely from the things which belonged to her.