"What! eighty-one barrels? But, Matilda, it makes no difference about the number of persons. It may be one hundred or it may be twenty. Suppose it were a bushel of potatoes they consumed in nine weeks. How many would they use in one week?"
The girl again shook her head and resumed her upward gaze.
"Would they not use one-ninth of a bushel? Or, we'll take a peach for instance."
Matilda's face brightened perceptibly and almost lost its look of dejection. The teacher noted the change and smiled encouragingly as she said:
"We'll suppose a peach will last you nine days. What part of it will you eat in one day?"
The expectant look faded out of the poor girl's face. One peach to last nine days! No wonder the question seemed impossible of solution.
"Well, then," said Miss Harper quite in despair and almost perspiring in her effort to make it plain to the child, "we'll let the peach go. Suppose instead, it were a watermelon. If you ate a carload of watermelons in nine days, what part of a carload would you eat in one day?"
At the mention of her favorite fruit, Matilda's eyes glistened, her features relaxed into a broader smile, and almost before the teacher had finished she had her answer ready and gave a correct analysis. Watermelons had won.
At last the little clock that ticked away the hours on the teacher's table pointed to the time for the noon intermission, and with a whoop and halloo almost deafening, the pupils rushed out with dinner pails and baskets to eat their luncheon in the shady woods.
Miss Harper led Alice away to her boarding-place across the fields. Scarcely taking time to taste the different kinds of jams, jellies, grape-butter, and other sauces set out by the hostess in special honor of the young visitor, Alice hastily dispatched her dinner and was soon back at the playground, where she found a bevy of girls seated on a big grapevine which one of the larger girls was swinging backward and forward amid shouts of glee. Nearby two gingham sunbonnets bobbed up and down as their owners bent their heads to watch a speckled lady-bug crawl up a twig.