"You won't make me study my eyes out?"
"That would be a pity. You see mine are not yet gone, and I don't mean to ask you to study any harder than I did."
Bert looked at the eyes of her teacher which were quite as bright as her own, and lost her apprehensions on that score.
"I'll tell you why I asked," said she, after a pause. "There's a girl that goes to school—she's only twelve years old—and she has to wear spectacles, and I heard somebody say it was because she studied so hard. I shouldn't want to be obliged to wear spectacles."
Mrs. Codman could not forbear laughing at the idea of her frolicsome little scholar, with a pair of glasses perched upon her nose, and promised her that if she found there was any prospect of her being obliged to wear them, she would advise her at once giving up study.
"Then I hope," thought Bert, "I shall need them soon."
"Now," proceeded Mrs. Codman. "I am going to give you short and easy lessons in reading, spelling, and arithmetic. It won't take you long to get there, if you only try. When you have recited them, we are to go out and ride in the carriage."
"Oh, that will be nice," exclaimed the child. "Tell me what the lesson is, quick."
The lessons were got and said sooner than could have been expected, and so Bert had taken the first step in ascending the hill of learning.