Then both girls said good-bye and ran home.

A few days later Polly announced to Miss Kathy that she was ready to read the long promised tale.

“Mother says you will be in the back room sewing this afternoon, so I will bring my little rocker and sit here and read to you.  My book is full of beautiful stories about children and birds and bees.”

I too anticipated a pleasant afternoon, for my cage still hung within the doorway where I could hear and see all that took place in both apartments.  Soon after dinner Miss Kathy appeared in the back room with her thimble and scissors and seated herself at the work-table.  Polly drew up her chair beside her.  The book she held was a pretty little affair bound in red with a silver inscription on the covers, and after being duly admired by both, Polly opened it and selected the following story, which she read aloud: 

    THE MOUNT AIRY SCHOOL.

The breath of blossoms was in the air and spicy scents from the woods that lined the lane on each side came floating to the delighted senses of a little girl who drove slowly along the road leading to Mount Airy School.

Young horses frisked in the pastures or came whinnying to the fence as she passed.  Lazy cows cropped the grass at the sides of the road, pushing their heads into the zigzag corners of the rail fence in pursuit of the tender clover that had crept through from the thrifty meadows.

The school was a little brick structure standing back a short distance from the road, with a playground on each side as enchantingly beautiful as it was novel to Alice Glenn, the little girl who had come from town by invitation of the teacher to visit the school.  Accustomed to the severer discipline of the graded school of which she was a member, the unconventional ways of these children amused the young visitor greatly.  But who could study on a morning like this, with the delicious warbling of the birds sounding in one’s ears?

Who could be expected to take an interest in nouns and adverbs while his heart was out in the woods with the bugs and bees or with the sheep over in yonder field, whose ba-a, ba-a, was borne in distinctly through the open door?

“I’m sure I would never have my lessons if I went to school here in the summer time,” thought Alice as she glanced over the room.  “The country is too lovely to be spoiled by school books.  Why, that boy has a wounded bird in his desk!  I wonder if Miss Harper knows?” And a moment after, Alice met the bold, defiant look of the boy himself, which seemed to say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?  That bird belongs to me.”

The history class being called at this moment the big boy got up, shoved the little creature to the farthest corner of his desk and giving Alice a parting scowl, went forward to recite his lesson.  Notwithstanding her desire to befriend the feathered captive she soon became interested in the class and could scarcely refrain from laughing outright at the answer to the teacher’s question, “What happened at Bunker Hill?”