But beyond a little mild clapping, the recitation received no attention whatever, while Viola Treddick's composition was, as the Bilberry Beacon reported, received with the greatest enthusiasm. It was on "School-girl Friendships," and there was some real fun in it; and once in a while it was pathetic, or, at all events, the audience laughed and cried, and they couldn't really do that, as Cosy averred they did, because they liked Viola. It closed with a verse of original poetry, and Bilberry began to feel sure that a great poet was to arise in its midst.
Lizette stopped and hugged Amasa behind a juniper-tree on the way home from the exhibition. Viola had staid to a spread that was given to the pupils and their friends; Lizette had to hurry back to her work in the factory; and Amasa had felt that he did not shine in society. Amasa could not remember ever to have seen Lizette cry for joy before; she was not one of the crying kind, anyway.
"She'll have a chance! Viola will have a chance! She'll get the Pine Bank School," she said, rapturously. "I've been so afraid she would have to go into the factory."
Amasa realized suddenly how hard life was for Lizette. Her delicate hands were calloused and knobby, and her shoulders bent; she looked wistfully at the library books, and never had time to read; she knew that she wasn't strong, and she was anxious about their future—Viola's and his.
It was the very next night, as Amasa was going to bed, that Cosy Pringle came under his window and called to him. Amasa went down and unfastened the door, and Cosy followed him up stairs.
He seemed excited and nervous, and kept saying "'Sh!" though there was no one stirring in the house. But it was like Cosy to have some mysterious scheme on foot. Amasa thought that he had at last discovered how Pember Tibbetts made his musk-rat traps, or guessed the conundrum in the County Clarion, for which intellectual feat a prize of five dollars was offered. Or perhaps he had secured the job of weeding Mr. Luke Mellon's onion bed and hoeing his string-beans; last year he was paid three dollars for the job, and hired Amasa to do the work for seventy-five cents. Amasa stoutly resolved not to be the victim of Cosy's sharp business methods this year.
But Cosy's shrewd gray eyes had a twinkle that meant more than onion-weeding or any "jobs."
"That was an awful nice composition that your sister wrote," he said, in an easy, complimentary manner.
Amasa nodded, brightening; it was more like Cosy to make a fellow feel small about his sisters and all his possessions.
"Folks are saying that she'll get the Pine Bank School, if Elkanah Rice, that's school committee, does want it for his niece. A good thing, too, for Lizette is pretty well worn out taking care of you all." Cosy wagged his head with great solemnity. "Aunt Lucretia said she shouldn't be surprised if she got consumptive, like her mother, if she worked too hard."