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 and then if folks should begin to tell me what I ought to do, or go to teasing me and saying that you and I won't be chums any more after she comes, and things like that,—well, it would make it harder, and I've got work enough to do on it as it is."

I looked at her. "You've got—what?"

Bess blushed. "Oh, nothing," she said, "I just—Come, we were going to talk about the weather."

"But what did you say?" I persisted.

Bess hesitated.

"You said you had 'work' to do on it."

"Well, I meant—I meant that—why, if I've been thinking wrong about anything, it takes some work to come to think right, doesn't it?"

"How?" I asked. "What sort of work?"

"Well, if I had learned the wrong way to do examples in multiplication, learned the rule wrong, you know, it would take some work to learn to do them right, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"And if I had learned addition and subtraction wrong, it would make it harder still, wouldn't it?"