"Will you try it, Earle?"
And Earle went. Silence in the class-room. All eyes on the blackboard, and the quick fingers of one boy handling the crayon. How fast he worked! Had be multiplied right?—No. Yes, that was right. O, but he had blundered in subtraction! No, he had not; every figure was right. Ah! now he had reached the place where none of them knew what to do next. But he knew! Without pause or confusion, he moved on, through to the very last figure, which he made with a flourish. Moreover, he knew how to explain his work, just what he did, and why he did it. As he turned to take his seat, the admiring class, whose honor he had saved, broke into applause, which the smiling teacher did not attempt to check.
"I think we owe Earle a vote of thanks," she said. "I confess my surprise as well as pleasure in his work; I did not expect any of you to succeed. In truth, I gave you the example rather as a trial of patience than in the hope that you could conquer it. You remember, however, that I gave you permission to secure help if you utterly failed. Will you tell us, Earle, if you had any help?"
"Yes'm," said Earle. "My Cousin Carrol helped me."
And then Cousin Carrol's astonishment suddenly broke into laughter.
"I have not the least idea what he means," she said, in her clear, silvery voice. "I was so far from helping him that I tried all by myself to do the example, and failed."
The class began to cheer again, but hushed suddenly to hear what Earle was saying.
"All the same, she helped me," he said, sturdily. Then, seeing that he must explain, he added, hurriedly "We had been talking about the giants, you know, and the grasshoppers, just the night before, and I thought to myself then that I was not a grasshopper, anyhow; but I never thought about the example being a giant, and I was just going to quit it when Cousin Carrol came to the door and spoke about the giants, and then I went at it again."
Some of the pupils looked hopelessly puzzled. Mr. Hamlin's face was one broad smile. "Students of Old Testament history have the advantage here today, I fancy," he said.
"Earle," said Miss Andrews, "are you willing to tell us how long you worked on the example?"