ooked knitting-needles! That
queer old school-house, with the hacked-up benches, where we learned
"rithumtick" by laying buttered paper over the pictures in Emerson's
First Part, and drawing blackbirds, chairs, and cherries all in a
row! Fel had a long wooden pencil, but poor I must do with half a one,
for 'Ria teased me by making me think people would call me selfish if
I had a long pencil all to myself, while my grown-up and much more
worthy sister went without any.

That funny old school-house, where Miss Lee used to make a
looking-glass of one of the window-panes, by putting her black apron
behind it, and peeping in to see if her hair was smooth when she
expected the committee men! How afraid we were of those committee men,
and how hard we studied the fly-leaves of our "joggerphies" while they
were there, feeling so proud that we knew more than "that great
Gust!"

That dear, queer, funny old school-house! No other hall of learning
will ever seem like that to me!

Didn't we go at noon to the spring under the river bank and "duck" our
little heads, till our mothers found it out and forbade it? Didn't we
squeeze long-legged grasshoppers, and solemnly repeat the couplet:--

"Grass'per, grass'per Gray,
Give me some m'lasses,
And _then_ fly away."

Didn't we fling flat pebbles in the river to the tune of

"One to make ready,
Two to prepare,
Three to go slap-dash,
Right--in--there"?

And how we enjoyed our dinners under the spreading oil-nut tree,
chatting as we ate, and deciding every day anew that Tempy Ann made
the nicest sage cheese in the world, and our Ruthie the best
turnovers.

Sometimes at night father took me on his lap, and asked,--

"Do you whisper any at school?"

I turned away my face and answered,

"Fel whispers _orfly_."

"Well, does Totty-wax whisper too?"

I dropped my head, and put my fingers in my mouth.

"_Some_," said I, in a low voice. For I began to have a dim idea that
it was not proper to tell a lie.

When Fel and I had any little trouble,--which was not often, for Fel
generally gave up like a darling,--Maria was always sure to decide
that Fel was in the right. Fel thought 'Ria a remarkable young woman;
but I told her privately, in some of our long chats at school, that
older sisters were not such blessings as one might suppose. So far as
I knew anything about them, they enjoyed scrubbing your face and neck
the wrong way with a r