give out the words, and the children spelled away
blithely. Now and then one would miss and another would go above.

To everybody's surprise, Marjorie began to work her way up toward the
head of her line. She spelled correctly words that the others missed,
and with a happy smile went along up the line.

At last the "spelling down" began. This meant that whoever missed a word
must go to his seat, leaving only those standing who did not miss any
word.

One by one the crestfallen unsuccessful ones went to their seats, and,
to the amazement of all, Marjorie remained standing. At last, there were
but six left in the match.

"Macaroni," said Miss Lawrence.

"M-a-c-c-a-r-o-n-i," said Jack Norton, and regretfully Miss Lawrence
told him he must sit down.

Three more spelled the word wrongly, and then it was Marjorie's turn:

"M-a-c-a-r-o-n-i," said she, triumphantly, remembering her father's
remark that there were no double letters in it.

Miss Lawrence looked astounded. Now there were left only Marjorie and
Gladys, one on either side of the room. It was an unfortunate situation,
for so fond were the girls of each other that each would almost rather
fail herself than to have her friend fail.

On they went, spelling the words as fast as Miss Lawrence could
pronounce them.

Finally she gave Gladys the word "weird."

It was a hard word, and one often misspelled by people much older and
wiser than these children.

"W-i-e-r-d," said Gladys, in a confident tone.

"Next," said Miss Lawrence, with a sympathetic look at Gladys.

"W-e-i-r-d," said Marjorie, slowly. Her father had drilled her carefully
on this word, bidding her remember that it began with two pronouns: that
is, we followed by I. Often by such verbal tricks as this he fastened
the letters in Marjorie's mind.

The match was over, and Marjorie had won, for the first time in her
life.

Gladys was truly pleased, for she would rather have lost to Marjorie
than any one else, and Miss Lawrence was delighted, though mystified.

"I won! I won!" cried Marjorie, as she ran into the house and found her
mother. "Oh, Mother, I won the spelling-match! _Now_, aren't you glad I
went after my book?"

"I'm glad you won, dearie; but hereafter I want you to stick to
civilized behavior."

"I will, Mother! I truly will. I'm so glad I won the match, I'll stick
to anything you say."

"Well, my girlie, just try to do what you think Mother wants you to, and
try not to make