THE BILBERRY SCHOOL EXHIBITION.
BY SOPHIE SWETT.
Simpsy Judkins was to "speak a piece," and Viola Treddick to read an original composition; there was to be a glee sung by picked voices from the first class—it was all about the deep blue sky, and "the sky, the sky, the sky," was repeated in a very thrilling and effective manner; and Tom Burtis was to display his powers as a lightning calculator. The exhibition was to be given in the new Town-hall, and not only would all Bilberry be there, but a crowd of people from the adjacent towns as well, to say nothing of teachers and pupils from the Normal School at Cocheco; for the Bilberry Hill School exhibitions had acquired a reputation.
In the Treddick family the girls had been obliged to take the family burden upon their shoulders. When Father Treddick died, somewhat less than a month after Mother Treddick, turning his face to the wall, and saying that she had been his backbone and his underpinning and he couldn't live without her (it sometimes happens that way in spite of Mother Nature), the rocks still had the upper hands on the little farm, and Amasa, the only boy, was but eleven. Lizette, who was fifteen, went to work in the stocking factory. Every one thought it was a pity, because Lizette was fond of books and had meant to be a teacher; she was slight and delicate, too, and work in the stocking factory was hard. But Lizette believed in doing "not what ye would, but what you may," with just as good a will as if it were the former. Some people said she had taken warning by her father's example; he had always been trying to invent something in his queer little workshop that was the wood-shed chamber; that was why the rocks had not been gotten out of the farm.
It was Viola who was now spoken of as a remarkably fine scholar, just as Lizette had been before she went into the factory; she was not yet sixteen, but she hoped to get the Pine Bank School to teach in September. There were several other candidates, all older than she, but Viola was at the head of her class, and that original composition which she was to read at the exhibition was expected to make an impression upon the committee-men. The teacher had said to several people that it was really a remarkable production for a girl of Viola's age, and they thought a great deal of literary gifts in Bilberry.
Lizette was very proud of Viola, and so, indeed, was Amasa, who was fourteen now, but whose name was not on the programme at all. To tell the painful truth at once, although Amasa keenly felt the especial need there was that he should be "smart," although he tried his best to be the man of the family in a satisfactory sense, yet he was at the very foot of his class; fractions floored him, and he had a hazy idea that Timbuctoo was out West, and that Captain John Smith discovered America. When it came to chopping wood, Amasa was pretty sure to cut his toe, and if he went fishing he tumbled into the pond. And he couldn't get "jobs," like Cosy Pringle, the boy in the next house, who had money in the bank.
Cosy Pringle boasted that he always "came out top of the heap"; but some people thought he was too "smart."
When the exhibition day came, although Simpsy Judkins had been announced to "speak a piece," it was Cosy Pringle who spoke it; there was a report that he had hired Simpsy to have a sore throat. Simpsy had oratorical gifts, but he did not feel the advantages of appearing in public and having his name in the paper, as Cosy did. Cosy held the second rank in declamation, so Simpsy's sore throat gave him an opportunity to be heard. He wasn't second in his class; he came sympathizingly near to Amasa there; but he had carefully weighed opinions—which he sometimes confided to Amasa—concerning the amount of study that "paid."
Mother Nature provided one of her loveliest days, as she is apt to do for school exhibitions in June. The girls, in fleecy muslin clouds, were so much in evidence that the boys, in the background, were only a little hampered by the embarrassment of full dress. Cosy Pringle wasn't hampered at all; he wore his grandfather's large gold chain and his sister Amanda's moonstone ring, and felt that he ought to attract as much attention as the girls.
Cosy's voice was a little thin and sharp, but he recited one of Macaulay's lays with a great deal of "r-r-rolling drum" very well indeed, having been thoroughly coached by his sister Amanda and the young minister to whom Amanda was going to be married.