“Don’t be surprised, Harriet,” said her aunt, “at any thing that may happen to-day. Only be thankful if the prize is yours, that’s all.”
“If Kate Sumner don’t win it, I do hope I shall!” replied the eager child, and away she tripped to school.
At twelve o’clock Mrs. Carlton and her sister took their seats among the audience, in the exhibition room. The usual exercises were completed, and it only remained for the compositions to be read aloud by the teacher.
The first was a sentimental essay upon Friendship. Mr. Wentworth, the teacher, looked first surprised, then amused, then vexed as he read, while a gaily and fashionably dressed lady, who occupied a conspicuous place in the assembly, was observed to toss her head and fan herself with a very complacent air, while she met, with a nod, the conscious eyes of a fair and beautiful, but haughty looking girl of fifteen seated among the pupils.
“By Angelina Burton,” said the teacher, as he concluded, and laying it aside without further comment, he took up the next—“Lines to a Favorite Tree,” by Catherine Sumner.
It was short and simple, and ran as follows—
Thy leaves’ lightest murmur,
Oh! beautiful tree!
Each bend of thy branches,
The stately, the free,