Lizbeth of the Dale

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

For a time Elizabeth strove to live up to her lofty position. The fear of even yet being sent back to Mary's class, which Miss Hillary held over her as an incentive to working fractions, drove her to make desperate efforts even to learn spelling. Rosie helped her all she could, and Rosie was a perfect wonder at finding royal roads to learning. If you could spell a word over seventeen times without drawing your breath, she promised, you would be able to repeat it correctly forever after. Elizabeth tried this plan with "hieroglyphics," but reached the end of her breath, purple and gasping, with only fourteen repetitions to her credit. She attributed her failure to spell the word the next day to this, rather than to the fact that, in her anxiety to accomplish the magic number, she had changed the arrangement of the letters several times.

But as the days passed, and the danger of being returned to the Third class disappeared, Elizabeth relaxed her efforts and returned to her habitual employment of drawing pictures on her slate and weaving about them rose-colored romances. Another danger was disappearing, too. Miss Hillary, finding that Forest Glen School was not hatching rebellion, gradually became less vigilant, and there was in consequence much pleasant social intercourse in the schoolroom.

Of course Elizabeth, like the other pupils, found that one could not always be sure of the teacher. She might never notice a slate dropped upon the floor, provided one took care to drop it on a day when she didn't have a nervous headache. But on the other hand, if one chose one's occasion injudiciously, she might send one to stand for half an hour in the corner, even though one was a big girl, now going on twelve.

But Rosie found the key to this uncertain situation, also. Rosie's farm joined the Robertsons', where Miss Hillary boarded, and the small, observant neighbor discovered a strange connection between her teacher's headaches and the actions of a certain young gentleman from town. She explained it all to Elizabeth one day, behind their slates, when the complex fraction refused to become simple.

Rosie was very solemn and very important. Martha Ellen Robertson had told her big sister Minnie all about it, and Rosie had heard every word. Miss Hillary had a fellow, only Elizabeth must promise for dead sure that she'd never, never tell. Because, of course, anything about a fellow was always a dreadful secret. This young man was very stylish and very handsome, and he lived in Cheemaun, and, of course, must be very rich, because everybody was who lived there. He came out nearly every Sunday in a top-buggy and took Miss Hillary for a drive. Minnie and Martha Ellen both said it was perfectly scand'lus to go driving Sundays, and the trustees ought to speak to her. The young man wrote to Miss Hillary, too, for every Wednesday she went to the post-office, and Mrs. Clegg said she 'most always got a letter. But sometimes she didn't; and the important point for themselves was just here—Rosie grew very impressive—they had to watch out on Mondays and Thursdays, if the young man didn't come, or if the letter failed, for then sure and certain Miss Hillary would go and get a headache and be awful cross and strict. Yes, it was true, because Jessie Robertson, and Lottie Price, and Teenie Johnstone, and all the big girls said so. And Jessie Robertson had promised to tell them so they could be careful, and Lizzie could just look out and see if she wasn't right.

Elizabeth did look out, and found as usual that Rosie was correct. Rosie was so wonderful and so clever that, though she was only half a year older than her friend, the latter lived in constant admiration of her sagacity. For, as far as worldly wisdom was concerned, Rosie was many, many years older than the precocious Elizabeth.

The young man of the top-buggy soon became a fruitful source of gossip in the schoolroom, especially amongst the older girls. Jessie Robertson, who lived right at the base of supplies, issued semi-weekly bulletins as to whether they might expect a headache or not, and Forest Glen conducted itself accordingly.

So, having settled exactly the periods of danger, and finding that often Mondays and Thursdays were days of happiness and license, Forest Glen settled down securely to its intermittent studies.

Elizabeth soon ceased to trouble much even over spelling, and she and Rosie gave themselves up to the fashion of the hour. And every hour had its fashion. For like most rural schools, amongst the girls at least, Forest Glen was a place of fads and fancies.

No one ever knew just how or why a new craze arose, but there was always one on the tapis. At one time it was pickles. No one could hope for any social recognition unless one had a long, green cucumber pickle in one's dinner-pail—the longer the pickle the higher one's standing. Fads ranged all the way from this gastronomic level to the highly esthetic, where they broke out in a desire for the decorative in the form of peep-shows. A peep-show was an arrangement of flowers and leaves pressed against a piece of glass and framed in colored tissue-paper. Every girl had one on her desk; even to dirty, unkempt Becky Davis. Elizabeth was not a success at such works of art. She was a wonder at inventing new patterns, and gained recognition from even the big girls by suggesting a design of tiny, scarlet maple leaves, green moss, and gold thread. But when it came to construction, she left that to Rosie and took to drawing new designs on her slate. No one could compete with Rosie anyway. She had something new and more elaborate each morning.