CHAPTER XIX

 The sting of Poverty

At first Miss Cramp’s “giving out” of the words was like repeated volleys of small-arms in this orthographical battle.  Every pupil well knew the pages of two-syllable words beginning, “baker, maker, poker, broker, quaker, shaker” and even the boys rattled these off, grinning the while in a most sheepish fashion at their elder brothers or their women-folk, who beamed in pride upon them until such lists as “food, soup, meat, bread, dough, butter” bowled over the more shaky ones.

The first failures (and usually upon comparatively easy words) were greeted with some laughter, and the ridiculed spellers sought their seats with hanging heads.  By and by, however, the failures were not all at the bottom of the class; here and there such lists as “inane, profane, humane, insane, mundane, urbane,” or, “staid, unlaid, mermaid, prayed, weighed, portrayed” began to pick out uncertain ones the entire length of the line.

Miss Cramp shot out word after word, her spectacles gleaming and her eyes twinkling.  The grim little smile upon her lips when one big girl above Ruth went down before “forswear,” spelling it with an extra “e,” showed that the teacher considered the miss deserved to fail because of her heedlessness.  Then, when she reached the list ending in “ay, ey and eigh” they fell like ripe huckleberries all down the line.  “Inveigh” dropped so many that it was indeed a massacre, and some of the nervous spellers got together such weird combinations of letters to represent that single word that the audience was soon in a very hilarious state.

“Move up,” commanded Miss Cramp to the pupils left standing, and there was a great clumping of feet as the line closed up.  Not more than two dozen were standing by this time, and half an hour had not passed.  But after that it was another story.  The good spellers remained.  They spelled carefully and quietly and a hush fell upon the whole room as Miss Cramp gave out the words with less haste and more precision.

The “seeds,” as all the children called the puzzling list, floored two, and several of the best spellers had to think carefully while the list was being given out:  “proceed, succeed, exceed, accede, secede, recede, impede, precede, concede, antecede, intercede, supersede.”  Fortunately Ruth, who now kept her eyes upon Miss Cramp’s face, spelled carefully and correctly, without any sign of hesitancy.  The match went on then, for page after page, without a pupil failing.  Perhaps there was hesitation at times, but Miss Cramp gave any deserving scholar ample time.