Page:Dorothy Canfield - Understood Betsy.djvu/122

102 make what grade you're in? And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?"

"Well, for goodness' sakes!" ejaculated Elizabeth Ann, feeling very much as though somebody had stood her suddenly on her head.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked the teacher again.

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her