"I know! the elevens are easy up to ten times eleven. Mr. Conway is seventy-seven; but I shall have to think about you and Uncle."
"No fair peeping into your arithmetic, young lady!" laughed the Doctor.
"That just reminds me of something. Will you please see Sister Florian in the morning, Father, and ask her to give me a new reader?"
"Have you lost your book, or is it worn out?"
"Neither, Father. It is too easy. It is only the Second Reader, and I can read all the lessons in it; so I think I had better have the Third; don't you?"
"Sister Florian will be the best judge of that, pet. Are you as well up in your other studies as you are in reading? How about number work?"
"That is the hardest thing of all, Father."
"Then it would be well to devote to that study the time when the other children are preparing their reading; would it not?"
"Ye—es, Father, I s'pose it would."
"And remember what I have said, dear, about Berta and Beth. Just look upon them as playmates, and Liza will attend to the many, many things that you have been doing to help Mother. Your studies will be duties enough for you until you are quite a little older; and all the daylight hours when you are not in school must be spent outdoors playing with Rosemary and those other little girls whom Mother said you might bring home from school with you last spring. Their parents are friends of ours."