lizabeth dashed down the aisle and out of
the door, so noisy and boisterous that for a moment her teacher felt
constrained to call her back and give her another lesson in deportment.
For Miss Hillary did not yet understand.

CHAPTER VII

THE AGE OF CHIVALRY

Many years later there came days in Elizabeth Gordon's life when she
achieved a certain amount of fame, but never at their height did any
day shine so radiantly for her or bring her anything of the exaltation
of that moment when she and Rosie tremblingly took their places side by
side at the foot of the Junior Fourth class.

For a time Elizabeth strove to live up to her lofty position. The fear
of even yet being sent back to Mary's class, which Miss Hillary held
over her as an incentive to working fractions, drove her to make
desperate efforts even to learn spelling. Rosie helped her all she
could, and Rosie was a perfect wonder at finding royal roads to
learning. If you could spell a word over seventeen times without
drawing your breath, she promised, you would be able to repeat it
correctly forever after. Elizabeth tried this plan with
"hieroglyphics," but reached the end of her breath, purple and gasping,
with only fourteen repetitions to her credit. She attributed her
failure to spell the word the next day to this, rather than to the fact
that, in her anxiety to accomplish the magic number, she had changed
the arrangement of the letters several times.

But as the days passed, and the danger of being returned to the Third
class disappeared, Elizabeth relaxed her efforts and returned to her
habitual employment of drawing pictures on her slate and weaving about
them rose-colored romances. Another danger was disappearing, too.
Miss Hillary, finding that Forest Glen School was not hatching
rebellion, gradually became less vigilant, and there was in consequence
much pleasant social intercourse in the schoolroom.

Of course Elizabeth, like the other pupils, found that one could not
always be sure of the teacher. She might never notice a slate dropped
upon the floor, provided one took care to drop it on a day when she
didn't have a nervous headache. But on the other hand, if one chose
one's occasion injudiciously, she might send one to stand for half an
hour in the corner, even though one was a big girl, now going on twelve.

But Rosie found the key to this uncertain situation, also. Rosie's
farm joined the Robertsons', where Miss Hillary boarded,