“Well, I’m awfully mixed up!” said Betsy, complainingly.  “I don’t know what I am!  I’m second-grade arithmetic and third-grade spelling and seventh-grade reading and I don’t know what in writing or composition.  We didn’t have those.”

Nobody seemed to think this very remarkable, or even very interesting.  Uncle Henry, indeed, noted it only to say, “Seventh-grade reading!” He turned to Aunt Abigail.  “Oh, Mother, don’t you suppose she could read aloud to us evenings?”

Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann both laid down their sewing to laugh!  “Yes, yes, Father, and play checkers with you too, like as not!” They explained to Betsy:  “Your Uncle Henry is just daft on being read aloud to when he’s got something to do in the evening, and when he hasn’t he’s as fidgety as a broody hen if he can’t play checkers.  Ann hates checkers and I haven’t got the time, often.”

“Oh, I love to play checkers!” said Betsy.

“Well, now ...” said Uncle Henry, rising instantly and dropping his half-mended harness on the table.  “Let’s have a game.”

“Oh, Father!” said Cousin Ann, in the tone she used for Shep.  “How about that piece of breeching!  You know that’s not safe.  Why don’t you finish that up first?”

Uncle Henry sat down again, looking as Shep did when Cousin Ann told him to get up on the couch, and took up his needle and awl.

“But I could read something aloud,” said Betsy, feeling very sorry for him.  “At least I think I could.  I never did, except at school.”

“What shall we have, Mother?” asked Uncle Henry eagerly.

“Oh, I don’t know.  What have we got in this bookcase?” said Aunt Abigail.  “It’s pretty cold to go into the parlor to the other one.”  She leaned forward, ran her fat fore-finger over the worn old volumes, and took out a battered, blue-covered book.  “Scott?”

“Gosh, yes!” said Uncle Henry, his eyes shining.  “The staggit eve!”

At least that was the way it sounded to Betsy, but when she took the book and looked where Aunt Abigail pointed she read it correctly, though in a timid, uncertain voice.  She was very proud to think she could please a grown-up so much as she was evidently pleasing Uncle Henry, but the idea of reading aloud for people to hear, not for a teacher to correct, was unheard-of.

   The Stag at eve had drunk his fill
   Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,

she began, and it was as though she had stepped into a boat and was swept off by a strong current.  She did not know what all the words meant, and she could not pronounce a good many of the names, but nobody interrupted to correct her, and she read on and on, steadied by the strongly-marked rhythm, drawn forward swiftly from one clanging, sonorous rhyme to another.  Uncle Henry nodded his head in time to the rise and fall of her voice and now and then stopped his work to look at her with bright, eager, old eyes.  He knew some of the places by heart evidently, for once in a while his voice would join the little girl’s for a couplet or two.  They chanted together thus: