comb's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a
lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with
the fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew
over it, thrown in. I might have trusted Laddie. He never had
forgotten me; until he did, I should have kept unwavering faith.

Now, I had the best place of any one in the room, and I smoothed my new
plaid frock and shook my handmade curls just as near like Shelley as
ever I could. But it seems that most of the ointment in this world has
a fly in it, like in the Bible, for fine as my location was, I soon
knew that I should ask Laddie to put me down, because the window behind
me didn't fit its frame, and the night was bitter. Before half an hour
I was stiff with cold; but I doubt if I would have given up that
location if I had known I would freeze, because this was the most fun I
had ever seen.

Miss Amelia began with McGuffey's spelling book, and whenever some poor
unfortunate made a bad break the crowd roared with laughter. Peter
Justice stood up to spell and before three rounds he was nodding on his
feet, so she pronounced "sleepy" to him. Some one nudged Pete and he
waked up and spelled it, s-l-e, sle, p-e, pe, and because he really was
so sleepy it made every one laugh. James Whittaker spelled compromise
with a k, and Isaac Thomas spelled soap, s-o-a-p-e, and it was all the
funnier that he couldn't spell it, for from his looks you could tell
that he had no acquaintance with it in any shape. Then Miss Amelia
gave out "marriage" to the spooniest young man in the district, and
"stepfather" to a man who was courting a widow with nine children; and
"coquette" to our Shelley, who had been making sheep's eyes at Johnny
Myers, so it took her by surprise and she joined the majority, which by
that time occupied seats.

There was much laughing and clapping of hands for a time, but when Miss
Amelia had let them have their fun and thinned the lines to half a
dozen on each side who could really spell, she began business, and
pronounced the hardest words she could find in the book, and the
spellers caught them up and rattled them off like machines.

"Incompatibility," she gave out, and before the sound of her voice died
away the Princess was spelling: "I-n, in, c-o-m, com, in com, p-a-t,
pat, incompat, i, incompati, b-i-l, bil, incompatibil, i,
incompatibili, t-y, ty, incompatibility."

Then Laddie spelled "i