"Who made a pen?"
"I don't know," was Essie's frank reply.
And then she fell to thinking unheeding Grade's questions. After the letter had been read and talked over Essie said:
"Mamma, Gracie wanted to know who made pens, and I couldn't tell her; a thing we use so constantly too! I would like to know something about them myself."
"Well, dear, can't you find out?"
"If we were at home I could study it up in the library, but we haven't any books here excepting poems and Bibles and the dictionary."
"Is that the way you rank your books?" asked Mrs. Carter smiling.
"No; but it is such a matter of course to have the Bible that I was not going to mention it, then I just happened to think of the dictionary."
"Well, go to the dictionary and see what you find there."
Essie turned over the pages and read, "An instrument used for writing, formerly made of the quill of a goose or other bird, but now also of other materials, as gold and steel."