CHAPTER TEN
PREPARING FOR EXAMINATIONS
On the first Saturday in June the Sunny Seven were to meet at the Secret Sanctum, to begin a review of the term’s lessons, for the final examinations were only three weeks away.
Six of the girls were already there at the appointed hour, but, strange to relate, the one who was usually first, this day was last.
“Perhaps Betty isn’t coming,” Adele said. “It is possible that she is not going to take the examinations. You know she is a year younger than we are, and though she had been in Seven B in the South, the lessons are different, and when she came North last term, they put her in our grade on trial, and I think that she has found it very hard to keep up.”
“You are right, Adele,” Gertrude replied. “Mrs. Burd told me that she would far rather have Betty remain in this grade another year, but her Uncle George is eager for her to advance.”
“Here comes Betty on a skip and a run!” Rosamond exclaimed as she looked out of the cabin-door, and in another moment the little girl about whom they had been talking, danced in, and, sinking down on the couch, fanned her flushed face with her broad-brimmed hat.
“Girls!” she exclaimed as soon as she could get her breath. “I had decided to give up taking the examinations,—mother wanted me to,—when something very remarkable happened, and I am so excited about it, I just don’t know what to do.”
“Betty! Betty!” laughed Adele. “We can’t make head or tail out of what you are saying. Won’t you begin at the beginning of your story?”
“All right,” Betty replied, as she settled down among the sofa-pillows. “You know my Uncle George is a very smart young man.”
“He isn’t very young, is he?” Rosamond inquired.
“Why, mother says that he is,” Betty replied vaguely. “Of course he isn’t a boy, but every one says that he is very young to be an editor and hold such a responsible position on a big city newspaper.”
“I’ve heard my Giant Daddy say that your Uncle George writes very cleverly,” Adele said kindly.
Betty gave her a grateful glance as she continued, “Well, I guess he must write pretty well, for he’s just sold his first story for one hundred dollars. The check came on this morning’s mail, and Uncle George opened the letter while we were at breakfast. When he saw the check, he gave a whoop just like a boy, and he exclaimed, ‘Betsy Bobbets,’—that’s his pet name for me,—‘if there’s anything in this shining universe that you want, if a hundred dollars will buy it, you shall have it.’ Of course I said that I wanted a jet-black pony, just like Firefly, and Uncle George jokingly replied: ‘Betsy, we’ll make a bargain. If you will pass perfect in spelling and grammar, the pony shall be yours!’ Mother said, ‘Oh, George, I do not wish Betty even to try the examinations.’ But he exclaimed, ‘Puppy-dogs and fiddle-sticks! My dear madam, this daughter of yours is possessed of as fine a quality of gray matter as one could wish, but she is sadly lacking in concentration and perseverance.’”
“How could you remember all that?” Rosamond exclaimed.
“I guess because I was so interested and was listening hard, and, besides, I knew that Uncle George was right. I had not expected to be promoted this year, and so I had not really tried to learn the term’s work.”
“I believe that you could do it,” Adele remarked. “We should be sorry to be promoted and leave our little one behind. Now our plan is to review the entire term’s work, and if we go over and over it with Betty, we shall also be impressing the lessons more firmly on our own minds.”
“Then you think that I could do it?” Betty asked eagerly.
“Of course you can,” Adele replied confidently, as she opened a speller. “You all sit in a row and we will play school, the way we used to do, and we’ll take turns being the teacher. Now, Betty, don’t you mind if you make mistakes, but just listen and listen, and you will be surprised how much you will learn.”
Then followed a busy hour, and a robin, alighting for a moment on the door-sill, wondered why girls could stay within on such a perfect June day. But what could a robin know of examinations only three weeks away?
When at last the girls were sauntering across the meadows on their homeward way, Betty exclaimed joyously, “Girls, I’ve learned more to-day than in a whole month at school.”
“That’s because you put your mind on it, little one,” Gertrude replied. “I have always felt that you could do much better if you really wanted to.”
Suddenly Betty laughed gleefully. “Won’t Miss Donovan be surprised,” she chuckled, “if to-morrow in class I should happen to spell a word correctly? She says that I can think up more wrong ways to spell a word than any one she ever met.”
As Betty had prophesied, Miss Donovan was indeed surprised to hear a constantly improved recitation from that young lady, but little did she dream of the hours and hours that were spent by that once heedless girl in poring over spellers and grammars.
One morning when the girls met under the elm tree, Doris Drexel announced, “Only ten more days before the final examinations.”
“Oh-h!” moaned Betty Burd dolefully. “If you were saying only ten days more before Betty Burd’s funeral, I wouldn’t feel a bit more dismal about it!”
“Cheer up, little one,” Adele said brightly. “You are getting on famously. Can you spell ‘believe’ to-day?”
“B-e-l-i-e-v-e,” Betty replied with a faint attempt at a smile. “I do believe,” she added with conviction, “that whoever made up the English language tried to tangle the letters in it just as much as possible.”
“Those old sages didn’t know about your pony, Betsy, or they never would have done it,” Bertha Angel gayly remarked, and then the last bell called them to their classes.
This unusual application to her studies at last began to tell on Betty, and as the fatal day drew near she visibly drooped.
“George!” Mrs. Burd exclaimed one morning, when Betty, after having sat listlessly at the table, finally departed for school without having touched her breakfast. “If you do not forbid Betty’s studying so hard, I shall do so myself. She’s all I have left in the world, now that her daddy is gone, and I don’t care if she never, never learns to spell. If you wanted to give her a pony, why didn’t you do so without making her work so hard for it?”
George Wainwright had been unusually busy in his city office of late, and was seldom at the table when Betty was there, and as for the examinations, he had quite forgotten about them. But that night he was home for dinner, and he noticed how pale was the little girl whom he so dearly loved, and when she refused to eat chocolate pudding and whipped cream, her very favorite dessert, then, indeed, did his conscience smite him, and he decided to take the child out of school at once and get the pony, that she might ride and bring the roses back to her cheeks. And so it was that he asked her to walk with him in the garden while he had his after-dinner smoke.
This was always a treat to Betty, and she went with him gladly. After they had walked up and down the gravelly paths a few times, Uncle George asked suddenly, “And how’s the spelling getting on, Betsy Bobbets?”
“Well,” said Betty with a sigh, “I’ve got the ‘i-e’ right at last, and if they will examine me on that I am sure to be perfect; that is, I shall be if it’s a written examination. But, oh, Uncle George, if the principal, Mr. Dickerson, comes in and gives us an oral one, I won’t be able to spell one single word. I get so scared when he asks me a question; something clutches at my throat, and everything turns black before me, and even the words that I know I know, I just don’t know at all.”
Uncle George laughed at the twisted sentence, and then he drew the little girl down on a bench beside him.
“What is it that clutches at your throat, little one?” he asked.
Betty looked surprised as she replied, “Why, nothing, really, I suppose!”
“That’s just it,” Uncle George said earnestly. “People call it fear, but it is nothing. What is there to be afraid of? Since you know how to spell the word, all that you have to do is to spell it. And even if you misspell it, no harm is done. The word will always remain, and you can learn it at another time. Courage is the quality that I want my Betsy Bobbets to cultivate,—courage and fearlessness.”
“Oh, Uncle George!” Betty exclaimed, more like her bright self. “I am so glad that you have talked to me this way. I feel ever so much braver. I guess that all I am really afraid of is that I shall lose the pony.”
How Uncle George wanted to tell her that she should have the pony, come what might, but he decided that perhaps it would be better for her character-development if he left things as they were.
A few moments later Betty danced into the dining-room. Her mother, who was putting away the silver, glanced up anxiously. She hoped that her brother George had told Betty that she need not take the examinations, and she was convinced that this was so when Betty exclaimed gayly, “Oh, Mumsie, where’s my chocolate pudding and whipped cream? I’m so hungry for it!”
“It’s in the china-closet, dear. I thought that you might want it later,” the mother replied. And then, while Betty was eating the pudding with her old appreciation, Mrs. Burd asked, “Are you glad that you aren’t going to take the examinations, Betty?”
“But I am going to take them, mumsie dear, and you will be so proud of me when I bring home a card marked ‘perfect’ in grammar and spelling.”
Mrs. Burd was indeed puzzled, but she said no more just then. The girls, too, noticed the change in Betty, and then one morning, under the elm-tree, Peggy Pierce chanted dolefully, “And this is the day of the final examinations. They mean to find out how little I know.”
“Oh-h!” moaned Rosamond. “I’m scared stiff.”
Then Betty surprised them all by asking: “What’s scaring you, Rosie? You know your lessons, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do! I know every word in every book from cover to cover,” Rosie responded. “And so do we all, for that matter, for we’ve been over them together at least twenty times.”
“Well,” Betty remarked, “my Uncle George told me that fear is really nothing at all but just our imaginations. I know that there is nothing to be afraid of, and I’m not going to be afraid of it.” And before the girls could recover from their astonishment, the last bell rang and they went to their class-room.
Miss Donovan smiled encouragingly at them as they entered, and then the books were taken up and the examination-papers passed.
Some of the grammar questions were rather hard, and took a clear brain to think out. Adele glanced anxiously at Betty, but when that little girl smiled back so reassuringly, she gave her no further thought.
For an hour and a half the girls wrote and wrote, and then the papers were taken up and they were allowed fifteen minutes for recreation.
“Now,” said Rosamond, “what I would like to know is, are we to have a written examination or is Mr. Dickerson coming in to give us an oral test?”
“Mr. Dickerson is the father of five children,” said Gertrude, “so we need not be in the least afraid of him. He must know that children are not perfect.”
Once more in their seats in the class-room, the girls watched the door eagerly. Would he come or would he not? Suddenly the door opened a crack and then closed again; but a second later it reopened and Bob Angel entered, bearing a message for Miss Donovan. He smiled broadly at the girls as he went out. He felt sure that the message he had brought would be a welcome one.
Miss Donovan smiled, too, as she announced, “Mr. Dickerson has been called away, and so we will have a written examination.”
When at last the Sunny Seven were out under the elm-tree, Rosamond dropped down on the bench, exclaiming, “Well, girls, I don’t know how you all feel, but I am limp.”
Betty’s eyes were shining. “Wasn’t Miss Donovan a dear to give us so many i-e words!” she exclaimed joyously. “I almost think that I might as well name the pony.”
The next day Miss Donovan announced the result of the examinations, and she said: “First of all, I want to congratulate Betty Burd. Her grammar and spelling were perfect.” Then she added kindly, “Betty is to be excused from the test in arithmetic, because she is to be tutored in that subject during the summer, and then she will be promoted with the rest of the class in the fall.”
Such rejoicing as there was when the Sunny Seven were again under the elm-tree. Betty wanted the other girls to go home with her, and so across the meadows they joyously took their way. Into the house Betty danced, shouting, “Mumsie! Mumsie! I passed perfect in grammar and spelling.”
“It isn’t possible!” exclaimed her delighted and astonished mother, as she hurried from the library, embroidery in hand. But the card which Betty triumphantly produced verified this startling statement.
“Your Uncle George came home early this afternoon,” Mrs. Burd said. “He is in the study.”
But Mrs. Burd was wrong, for Uncle George, having heard the joyous commotion, knew that it could have but one meaning and was already in the hall.
“Just good enough to be true, Betsy Bobbets,” he exclaimed when he had heard the glorious news. Then Betty, remembering her manners, introduced the six girls, and Rosamond mentally decided that Uncle George was ever so good-looking and not so awfully old either.
“And now,” said that young man gayly, “let’s visit the barn.”
“Oh! Oh!” cried the delighted Betty, “Is that darling pony here this very minute?”
The pony was indeed there, and the girls all gave exclamations of admiration when they beheld him, for even Firefly was not more handsome.
Then each of the seven rode on his back around the circular drive, and Rosamond declared that a rocking-chair could not be more comfortable.
“I ought to name him Spelling or Grammar, I suppose,” Betty declared. “But since he has a white spot on his forehead, I’m going to call him Star.”
Then, when Uncle George had led the pony back to his stall, Mrs. Burd called the girls to the wide side-porch, which was so attractive and cosy with deep wicker chairs, comfortable cushions, and here and there big drooping ferns on wicker pedestals. When they were seated, Melissy, the colored maid, brought out cold lemonade and little nut-cookies.
“Well,” said Betty with a happy sigh, “I really do not deserve these high marks, for if Uncle George had not bribed me, and if you girls hadn’t encouraged and helped me, I probably would still be spelling ‘believe’ with an e-i.”
“Next year,” Gertrude said wisely, “we will learn our lessons each day as we go along, and then we shall not have to over-study just before the examinations.”
“And now,” Rosamond declared, “since vacation is here, we must plan to give that fudge party which we promised the boys.”