When she sat down on the battered old bench she almost laughed aloud, it seemed so funny to be in a class of only three.  There had been forty in her grade in the big brick building.  She sat in the middle, the little girl whom the teacher had called Ellen on one side, and Ralph on the other.  Ellen was very pretty, with fair hair smoothly braided in two little pig-tails, sweet, blue eyes, and a clean blue-and-white gingham dress.  Ralph had very black eyes, dark hair, a big bruise on his forehead, a cut on his chin, and a tear in the knee of his short trousers.  He was much bigger than Ellen, and Elizabeth Ann thought he looked rather fierce.  She decided that she would be afraid of him, and would not like him at all.

“Page thirty-two,” said the teacher.  “Ralph first.”

Ralph stood up and began to read.  It sounded very familiar to Elizabeth Ann, for he did not read at all well.  What was not familiar was that the teacher did not stop him after the first sentence.  He read on and on till he had read a page, the teacher only helping him with the hardest words.

“Now Betsy,” said the teacher.

Elizabeth Ann stood up, read the first sentence, and paused, like a caged lion pausing when he comes to the end of his cage.

“Go on,” said the teacher.

Elizabeth Ann read the next sentence and stopped again, automatically.

“Go on,” said the teacher, looking at her sharply.

The next time the little girl paused the teacher laughed out good-naturedly.  “What is the matter with you, Betsy?” she said.  “Go on till I tell you to stop.”

So Elizabeth Ann, very much surprised but very much interested, read on, sentence after sentence, till she forgot they were sentences and just thought of what they meant.  She read a whole page and then another page, and that was the end of the selection.  She had never read aloud so much in her life.  She was aware that everybody in the room had stopped working to listen to her.  She felt very proud and less afraid than she had ever thought she could be in a schoolroom.  When she finished,

“You read very well!” said the teacher.  “Is this very easy for you?”

“Oh, yes!” said Elizabeth Ann.

“I guess, then, that you’d better not stay in this class,” said the teacher.  She took a book out of her desk.  “See if you can read that.”

Elizabeth Ann began in her usual school-reading style, very slow and monotonous, but this didn’t seem like a “reader” at all.  It was poetry, full of hard words that were fun to try to pronounce, and it was all about an old woman who would hang out an American flag, even though the town was full of rebel soldiers.  She read faster and faster, getting more and more excited, till she broke out with “Halt!” in such a loud, spirited voice that the sound of it startled her and made her stop, fearing that she would be laughed at.  But nobody laughed.  They were all listening, very eagerly, even the little ones, with their eyes turned toward her.