This time Elizabeth Ann didn’t answer, because she herself didn’t know what the matter was.  But I do, and I’ll tell you.  The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school.  She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up.  Of course, she didn’t really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you’re learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you’ve been leaning on and says, “Now, go it alone!”

The teacher waited a minute, and then, when Elizabeth Ann didn’t say anything more, she rang a little bell.  “Recess time,” she said, and as the children marched out and began putting on their wraps she followed them into the cloak-room, pulled on a warm, red cap and a red sweater, and ran outdoors herself.  “Who’s on my side!” she called, and the children came darting out after her.  Elizabeth Ann had dreaded the first recess time with the strange children, but she had no time to feel shy, for in a twinkling she was on one end of a long rope with a lot of her schoolmates, pulling with all her might against the teacher and two of the big boys.  Nobody had looked at her curiously, nobody had said anything to her beyond a loud, “Come on, Betsy!” from Ralph, who was at the head on their side.

They pulled and they pulled, digging their feet into the ground and bracing themselves against the rocks which stuck up out of the playground.  Sometimes the teacher’s side yanked them along by quick jerks, and then they’d all set their feet hard when Ralph shouted out, “Now, all together!” and they’d slowly drag the other side back.  And all the time everybody was shouting and yelling together with the excitement.  Betsy was screaming too, and when a wagon passing by stopped and a big, broad-shouldered farmer jumped down laughing, put the end of the rope over his shoulder, and just walked off with the whole lot of them till he had pulled them clear off their feet, Elizabeth Ann found herself rolling over and over with a breathless, squirming mass of children, her shrill laughter rising even above the shouts of merriment of the others.  She laughed so she could hardly get up on her feet again, it was such an unexpected ending to the con test.

The big farmer was laughing too.  “You ain’t so smart as you think you are, are you!” he jeered at them good-naturedly.  Then he started, yelling “Whoa there!” to his horses, which had begun to walk on.  He had to run after them with all his might, and just climbed into the back of the wagon and grabbed the reins the very moment they broke into a trot.  The children laughed, and Ralph shouted after him, “Hi, there, Uncle Nate!  Who’s not so smart as he thinks he is, now!” He turned to the little girls near him.  “They ’most got away from him that time!” he said.  “He’s awful foolish about leaving them standing while he’s funning or something.  He thinks he’s awful funny, anyhow.  Some day they’ll run away on him and then where’ll he be?”