"That won't be for a long time. Isn't anything interesting going to happen before then?"
"Oodles of things. Next week all the clubs begin and a little later there'll be a pageant, and the Spelling Match is great."
"Why?" questioned Ethel Blue in a doubtful tone that made the others smile.
"You can see what Ethel Blue thinks about spelling," laughed Helen. "Why is it such good fun?"
"Oh, it's fun to see the grown-up people trying it just as if they were kids. They don't let anybody under fifteen go in. Mr. Vincent, the president, says young people are 'such uncomfortably good spellers.'"
"Ethel Blue wouldn't agree with him."
"It's true, though, because when you're in school you're getting practice every day, and the grown-up people don't get so much practice. They look up words in the dictionary instead of remembering the right way to spell them."
"It must be funny to see grown-up people fail, but I suppose they give them the hardest words there are."
"They take the words out of the Home Reading Course books for the next year. Miss Kimball told you about the Home Reading Course, didn't she?"
"Oh, we knew before," the girls all cried in chorus. "Our grandmother is a graduate."