ella kept a diary because her mother wanted her to. it was not always easy for her to think of something to write in it, but now she had a new subject, “getting up head.” if she planned carefully, she could make this subject serve her need for three days. for the first day she wrote, “i got up to the head of the class. after i have been there three recitations, i go to the foot and have fifteen extras.” for the second day she wrote, “i hope i can stay at the head of the class three recitations and then go to the foot and have fifteen extras.” for the third day she wrote, “i stayed at the head three recitations, then went to the foot to-day and now have fifteen extras.” it is small wonder that she awoke one morning saying over to herself:
“i get up head we get up head
thou gettest up head you get up head
he gets up head they get up head”
after two or three weeks, there was much talk about reports. the first one was coming at the end of her first month in the school, and ella’s heart sank whenever she thought about it. she had been at the head a number of times, and thought she had had[pg 121] more than enough extras to balance her few failures. still, she had a feeling that something might come that would give her a low rank or might even put her into a lower room.
the reports were to be given out on friday. thursday the principal came to the door and asked the teacher to send ella to the office. ella turned pale and her hands were cold. she had heard of severe scoldings and even worse that had taken place in that office. she did not know of anything that she had done, but there might be something. she wished she was back in the private school. her fingers trembled as she knocked at the door.
“come in,” said the voice of the principal, and she went in.
he said, “there is a matter about which i wish to speak to you, and perhaps it will not be necessary to see your mother.”
this was worse and worse.
“what could she have done,” thought the frightened little girl.
the principal went on:
“i have been looking over the reports of your room, and i find that yours is rather different from what i expected.” he paused a long moment. then he went on: “you have done remarkably well, better than i thought you could possibly do in a new school with new studies and new ways. when you go home this noon, you may tell your mother what i have said.[pg 122] and there is one thing more. do you think you can keep this a secret, and not say a word to any one but your mother?”
“yes, sir, i will,” ella declared with emphasis.
it would have been simpler to send a note, but this principal liked to try experiments, and he did not always realize the sensitiveness of children. he thought it would be interesting to see of what kind of stuff this little girl was made, and whether the interview would be agreeable to her hardly entered his mind.
“good-bye,” he said, “and tell your mother you are doing finely.”
the mother thought ella was too young to skip a class, so she was not promoted.
a week later, ella met the principal in the hall, and he asked, “did you tell any one besides your mother?”
he was pleased with the touch of indignation with which she replied, without deigning to say “no,” “i promised i wouldn’t.”
ella soon forgot the unpleasant part of this interview, and had a comfortable feeling that she and the principal had a secret together. when the other children blamed him, she always stood by him, and she was never afraid of him again.
she was radiantly happy when the reports were given out, for hers read, “scholarship, 91%, rank in class, 3. deportment, excellent.” below this, in the[pg 123] space for remarks, the teacher had written, “ella is studious and well behaved.” this pleased ella very much.
“you see,” she said to her mother, “she had to write percentage and rank, but she did not have to say anything in the ‘remarks,’ so she must have done that because she really wanted to.” and she read the line over and over.
ella’s likes and dislikes were very strong. when she “left out what form and voice the verb ‘forbid’ was,” and so lost her place at the head, she wrote that she “didn’t like grammar at all.” in the middle of the term, when things were a little dull and monotonous, she wrote forlornly:
“nothing in particular happened to-day, as indeed nothing happens any day but to get up, dress, and start for school; then i study hard all day long and come home at night, go to studying again, and so on, the same old routine over and over again, till i am sure that i am thoroughly sick of it all.”
the trouble was that the lessons had become so much easier that they no longer kept her fully occupied, and she had time to find fault.
however, if ella did find life monotonous, her teacher did not. the first teacher was ill and out of school, and a much younger one had taken her place.
this new teacher was rather too generous with “extras,” and her pupils soon found out that if they[pg 124] behaved well four days in the week, they could pile up extras enough to make up for all the misdeeds that they could commit on the fifth.
they were very systematic, these naughty children. four days they behaved like little saints, studying quietly and never whispering; but when the fifth day had come, they wrote notes to one another, they whispered, they made paper dolls, they wriggled and they twisted. they manufactured excuses for walking about the room. how every child could need to go to the dictionary and the waste-basket at least once in five minutes was a mystery to the young teacher. she began to have a nervous dread of fridays, for fear visitors might come and would report that her classes knew absolutely nothing and behaved exactly as they ought not; for many of her mischievous pupils carried their game so far as to do little studying for fridays.
ella would never agree to this. play and failures in class were two different things. it was fun to play, but it was a disgrace to fail. besides, friday’s lesson was always monday’s review lesson, and, as she very sensibly reasoned, it was better to learn it and have it done with than to spoil saturday by having to learn a double lesson for monday.
but she played, indeed she did, sheltered by a big open atlas. she made paper dolls and paper furniture, and she folded into boxes and rowboats and dustpans and chinese junks the squares of paper that in after [pg 125]years were sacred to the stern labors of the kindergarten. this bad child made a regular business arrangement with the little girl who sat in front of her. if, whenever ella touched her right shoulder three times, she would sit up very straight and act as a support for the open atlas, ella would give her every week one paper doll, three fly boxes, and two chinese junks.
of course the teacher could not help seeing part at least of what was being done “on the potomac,” as in her own mind she called ella’s desk; but she was really puzzled what to do, and none of her normal school notebooks gave her the least help. ella played so quietly and recited her lessons so well—even on fridays—that it was not easy to be severe with her. how could she be always finding fault with a child who was invariably respectful to her and who slipped up to the head of the class so easily, went to the foot with a store of extras numerous enough to provide for all emergencies, and in a day or two stood at the head again, ready to collect more extras? the term would soon be at an end, and she wisely concluded that she would not walk around to the rear of the atlas when she could avoid it.
about this time came the revealing of the great secret. ella and ida still sat together. the paper dolls of each visited those of the other. they shared each other’s worsteds and bright-colored papers, and lent each other new patterns in crocheting and working[pg 126] on canvas and perforated paper. one day, as they were walking home together after school, ida said to ella,
“we’re best friends, aren’t we?”
“of course we are,” declared ella wonderingly. “why?”
“because there’s a secret that we mustn’t tell to any one but our best friends. it’s the tories’ alphabet.”
“what are ‘tories’?”
“i don’t know, but this is their alphabet. it’s just a name for it, i guess. a big girl in the first room showed it to me, and told me never to let any one have it but my best friends. she said that another girl in a class before that gave it to her. it is an alphabet, and we can write notes with it, and no matter who finds one, it can’t be read.”
“can’t you show it to your mother?”
“yes. i showed it to mine after she promised not to tell any one about it; and you could show it to yours if she promised.”
school was no longer monotonous. it was a kind of fairyland where all sorts of marvelous things were happening. ella looked back with disdain upon her days at the seminary and even at the “private school for young ladies.” if they had lasted all her life, there would never have been anything so thrilling as this. there was no doubt now that she was within the circle to stay.
[pg 127]
this is a true copy of the tories’ alphabet.
a b c d e f g h i j
k l m n o p q r s t
u v w x y z &
* # + [plus various other symbols]
the sudden change that the revealing of this secret produced was a vast relief to the troubled mind of the teacher. there was no more making of dolls, no more folding of kindergarten papers. the tiny bottles of mucilage disappeared, and never once was a pair of scissors heard to fall upon the floor. walk back of the atlas when you would, there was nothing to be seen—if you did not come too near—but writing books and scraps of paper whereupon a little girl with unusually poor handwriting was apparently trying her best in her spare time to improve it.
[pg 128]
in their mysterious alphabet the two children wrote notes innumerable to each other, and even copied long poems, and they might easily have taken up another study in the time that they gave to it. the teacher knew of course that something was going on, but it was such a relief to have them even apparently at work that she did not open her eyes any wider than was absolutely necessary.
the end of the second term was at hand, and those who stood well in the second room were to be promoted to the first room. ella was to go. it was an honor to be promoted, but when the reports were given out, she went home with a sober face and lagging steps. her percentage was 90, and her stand in the class was number one for the half term. the trouble was with the deportment. much as the teacher liked her, she could not fairly give her an “excellent.” the first half of the term was marked “good,” and the second—which began about the time of the revelation of the secret—was “very good.” but that was not “excellent,” and the mother had told her that, although a child might not always be able to take a high stand in her class, she could always be “excellent” in deportment. the time of reckoning had come.
“was there anything to prevent you from behaving well?” asked the mother.
“i did behave well four days out of every five, and sometimes others,” ella replied. “i might have been[pg 129] a good deal worse. i might have had an ‘unsatisfactory’ in deportment and in any one of the seven studies, or even in all of them, and i didn’t; i only had a ‘very good’ in just one thing. i don’t think that was bad at all. anyway, i couldn’t help it.”
“ella,” said the mother, “the doctors say that often when children seem to be naughty, it is because they are nervously tired and need more sleep. i think the thing to do will be for you to go to bed at eight o’clock every night for the next month. then you will be rested enough to behave well when you go into the first room.”
now one of the girls was to have a party during the next month, and two days of beejay’s week’s vacation came within its limits. then, too, this punishment touched her pocketbook seriously. she had never had for a sunday school teacher a milliner who would give her bits of ribbon, but she did have one at that moment who kept a pretty little fancy store. she was glad of all the mittens that ella could crochet, and the little girl was becoming quite a capitalist on the proceeds. she had planned many nice things to do with the money that she expected to make; and now there would be no time for anything but her lessons, and when the month was over, it would be too late for mittens.
she had one big cry, then she accepted the situation. one comfort was that the “month” was february and that it was not leap year. another was that when[pg 130] the day came for her to move into the first room, the young teacher forgot that she was a teacher and a graduate of the state normal school. she put her arm around the child and said,
“ella, if you only wouldn’t play quite so much, i would not ask for a better scholar—and anyway, play or no play, you are a dear little girl, and i wish you were my own small sister.”
