Ruby at School

by Mrs. George A. Paull

Twice a week she wrote long letters home to her mother, and told her all about her doings; and her mother was so much better that she was able to write to Ruby two or three times a week,—such loving letters that Ruby always wished for a little while that she could put herself in an envelope and send herself home to her mother, instead of waiting for Christmas. Ruby was doing so well that both her Aunt Emma and her father and mother wanted her to stay until the end of the term at any rate. Ruby hoped that when she went home she would be able to take with her at least one of the five prizes which were to be given at Christmas. There was a composition prize, a deportment prize, a prize for grammar, one for spelling, and one for improvement in music. Ruby had worked so hard in all her classes, and had been so careful to keep all the rules, that she was quite sure that she should take at least one prize home with her to show her father and mother how hard she had tried to be good.

If Ruthy could only have been with her, Ruby would have been quite contented; but with all her new friends she still missed the dear little friend who had been like a sister to her all her life.

A great many things that had seemed hard to Ruby when she first came were becoming so natural to her now that she never thought anything about them. The courtesying was no longer any trouble to her; on the contrary, she really liked it, and she amused her Aunt Emma one day by telling her that she thought that when she went home she should always courtesy to her father and mother when she went out of the room; for if it was respectful to courtesy to her teachers, it was certainly respectful to courtesy to any one else of whom she thought a great deal. She had learned to like egg-plant just as well as she did anything else, so her trouble over that had melted away into thin air; and she had found Agnes Van Kirk a very good friend to have, for she was a little girl who tried very hard to do right herself, and helped Ruby to do right, too.

Agnes was going to be a teacher some day, she hoped, and she was very fond of talking to Ruby about her plans. She was going to have a large boarding-school, and she was not quite sure whether she would have her girls courtesy or not when they went out of a room.

"Perhaps it will be old-fashioned by that time, you know," she said to Ruby, when the two girls had counted how many years must pass away before Agnes should have completed her education and opened her school. "Of course I should not teach my girls to do old-fashioned things, that would make people laugh at them, but I want them to do everything that is nice. I mean to be such a teacher as Miss Chapman. She never scolds, but all the girls mind her, and even those who break the rules always wish they had n't when she looks at them. I can hardly wait, I am in such a hurry to begin my school."

"And I will come and see you, and look at the girls the way that lady looked at us the other day when she came to visit the school," said Ruby. "Do you remember how beautifully she was dressed, Agnes, and how pretty she was? I wonder if she meant to send her little girl here, and that was why she came. Won't it be fun to go and visit your school when I don't have any of the lessons to study, nor anything. I will be very grand, and they will never guess that we used to be little girls and go to school together. I don't want to be a school-teacher, though."

"What do you want to be?" asked Agnes.

"I think I shall write books," announced Ruby.

"Why, what ever made you think of that?" asked Agnes, in astonishment. "You don't even like to write compositions, and how could you ever write books?"

"Oh, compositions are different from books," returned Ruby, airily. "I am sure I could write poetry, I like it so much. There is n't anything I like better than poetry day. I wish it was poetry day every Friday, instead of every other one being compositions. I don't think compositions are at all interesting. We have to write a composition for next time upon one of our walks. I think I will write about our walk this afternoon. I don't think there is ever very much to write about the walks we take. We just go out two and two, and we see the same things every time, and that is all there is of it."