Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher (autobiographies to read TXT) 📗

CHAPTER V

WHAT GRADE IS BETSY?

 

After the singing the teacher gave Elizabeth Ann a pile of schoolbooks,

some paper, some pencils, and a pen, and told her to set her desk in

order. There were more initials carved inside, another big H. P. with a

little A. P. under it. What a lot of children must have sat there,

thought the little girl as she arranged her books and papers. As she

shut down the lid the teacher finished giving some instructions to three

or four little ones and said, “Betsy and Ralph and Ellen, bring your

reading books up here.”

 

Betsy sighed, took out her third-grade reader, and went with the other

two up to the battered old bench near the teacher’s desk. She knew all

about reading lessons and she hated them, although she loved to read.

But reading lessons … ! You sat with your book open at some reading that

you could do with your eyes shut, it was so easy, and you waited and

waited and waited while your classmates slowly stumbled along, reading

aloud a sentence or two apiece, until your turn came to stand up and

read your sentence or two, which by that time sounded just like nonsense

because you’d read it over and over so many times to yourself before

your chance came. And often you didn’t even have a chance to do that,

because the teacher didn’t have time to get around to you at all, and

you closed your book and put it back in your desk without having opened

your mouth. Reading was one thing Elizabeth Ann had learned to do very

well indeed, but she had learned it all by herself at home from much

reading to herself. Aunt Frances had kept her well supplied with

children’s books from the nearest public library. She often read three a

week—very different, that, from a sentence or two once or twice a week.

 

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.

 

“You might as well go on and let us see how it came out,” said the

teacher, and Betsy finished triumphantly.

 

“WELL,” said the teacher, “there’s no sense in your reading along in the

third reader. After this you’ll recite out of the seventh reader with

Frank and Harry and Stashie.”

 

Elizabeth Ann could not believe her ears. To be “jumped” four grades in

that casual way! It wasn’t possible! She at once thought, however, of

something that would prevent it entirely, and while Ellen was reading

her page in a slow, careful little voice, Elizabeth Ann was feeling

miserably that she must explain to the teacher why she couldn’t read

with the seventh-grade children. Oh, how she wished she could! When they

stood up to go back to their seats she hesitated, hung her head, and

looked very unhappy. “Did you want to say something to me?” asked the

teacher, pausing with a bit of chalk in her hand.

 

The little girl went up to her desk and said, what she knew it was her

duty to confess: “I can’t be allowed to read in the seventh reader. I

don’t write a bit well, and I never get the mental number-work right. I

couldn’t do ANYthing with seventh-grade arithmetic!”

 

The teacher looked a little blank and said: “I didn’t say anything

about your number-work! I don’t KNOW anything about it! You haven’t

recited yet.” She turned away and began to write a list of words on the

board. “Betsy, Ralph, and Ellen study their spelling,” she said. “You

little ones come up for your reading.”

 

Two little boys and two little girls came forward as Elizabeth Ann began

to con over the words on the board. At first she found she was listening

to the little, chirping voices, as the children straggled with their

reading, instead of studying “doubt, travel, cheese,” and the other

words in her lesson. But she put her hands over her ears, and her mind

on her spelling. She wanted to make a good impression with that lesson.

After a while, when she was sure she could spell them all correctly, she

began to listen and look around her. She always “got” her spelling in

less time than was allowed the class, and usually sat idle, looking out

of the window until that study period was over. But now the moment she

stopped staring at the board and moving her lips as she spelled to

herself the teacher said, just as though she had been watching her every

minute instead of conducting a class, “Betsy, have you learned your

spelling?”

 

“Yes, ma’am, I think so,” said Elizabeth Ann, wondering very much why

she was asked.

 

“That’s fine,” said the teacher. “I wish you’d take little Molly over in

that corner and help her with her reading. She’s getting on so much

better than the rest of the class that I hate to have her lose her time.

Just hear her read the rest of her little story, will you, and don’t

help her unless she’s really stuck.”

 

Elizabeth Ann was startled by this request, which was unheard of in her

experience. She was very uncertain of herself as she sat down on a low

chair in the corner of the schoolroom away from the desks, with the

little child leaning on her knee. And yet she was not exactly afraid,

either, because Molly was such a shy little roly-poly thing, with her

crop of yellow curls, and her bright blue eyes very serious as she

looked hard at the book and began: “Once there was a rat. It was a fat

rat.” No, it was impossible to be frightened of such a funny little

girl, who peered so earnestly into the older child’s face to make sure

she was doing her lesson right.

 

Elizabeth Ann had never had anything to do with children younger than

herself, and she felt very pleased and important to have anybody look up

to HER! She put her arm around Molly’s square, warm, fat little body and

gave her a squeeze. Molly snuggled up closer; and the two children put

their heads together over the printed page, Elizabeth Ann correcting

Molly very gently indeed when she made a mistake, and waiting patiently

when she hesitated. She had so fresh in her mind her own suffering from

quick, nervous corrections that she took the greatest pleasure in

speaking quietly and not interrupting the little girl more than was

necessary. It was fun to teach, LOTS of fun! She was surprised when the

teacher said, “Well, Betsy, how did Molly do?”

 

“Oh, is the time up?” said Elizabeth Ann. “Why, she does beautifully, I

think, for such a little thing.”

 

“Do you suppose,” said the teacher thoughtfully, just as though Betsy

were a grown-up person, “do you suppose she could go into the second

reader, with Eliza? There’s no use keeping her in the first if she’s

ready to go on.”

 

Elizabeth Ann’s head whirled with this second light-handed juggling with

the sacred distinction between the grades. In the big brick schoolhouse

nobody EVER went into another grade except at the beginning of a new

year, after you’d passed a lot of examinations. She had not known that

anybody could do anything else. The idea that everybody took a year to a

grade, no MATTER what! was so fixed in her mind that she felt as though

the teacher had said: “How would you like to stop being nine years old

and be twelve instead! And don’t you think Molly would better be eight

instead of six?”

 

However, just then her class in arithmetic was called, so that she had

no more time to be puzzled. She came forward with Ralph and Ellen again,

very low in her mind. She hated arithmetic with all her might, and she

really didn’t understand a thing about