"Then I 'xpect you'll have to know the reason why," gulped the unhappy little scholar, who found the hill of knowledge very steep to climb. "You can't make a frog fly if you tried all your life. It takes me a month to learn as big a poem as that, and you never gave it to me until Friday afternoon."
"Nine four-line stanzas!" snapped the weary instructor, privately thinking Peace the greatest, trial she had ever had to endure.
"It might as well be ninety," sighed the child. "If Elizabeth was my teacher, or the Lilac Lady, I could get it in no time, but I never could learn anything for some people. Just the sight of them knocks everything I know clean out of my head."
Longfellow slammed shut with a terrific bang, and Miss Peyton rose from her chair, choking with indignation. "You may go now, Peace Greenfield," she said icily, "but that poem must be perfect by tomorrow afternoon, remember."
So with a heavy heart Peace trudged home and took up her struggle once more in the hammock; but was at last rewarded by being able to say every line perfectly and without much hesitation. Elizabeth and her spouse both heard her repeat it many times that evening and again the next morning, and sent her on her way rejoicing to think the task was conquered.
But when it came to the afternoon's rehearsal, poor Peace could only stare at the ceiling, and open and shut her lips in agony, waiting for the words which would not come, while Miss Peyton impatiently tapped the floor with her slippered toe and frowned angrily at the miserable figure. Finally Peace blurted out, "P'raps if you'd go out of the room, I could say it all right."
"You will say it all right with me in the room!" retorted the woman grimly.
"Then s'posing you look out of the window and quit staring so hard at me. All I can think of is that scowl, and it doesn't help a bit."
The dazed teacher shifted her gaze, and Peace slowly began, "'Come to me, O ye children!'" speaking very distinctly and with more expression than Miss Peyton had thought possible.
"There!" exclaimed the woman, much mollified, when the child had finished. "I knew you could say it if you wanted to. Now try it again."