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Lou Returns to School

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 43.

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Lou Returns to School

“or even longer,” she said to herself, “how shall I ever bear it? I’m afraid I shall forget sometime and do something wrong. I wish Miss Grafton would let me sit on a chair in a corner; but maybe that would look like favoritism. Perhaps mama would say I ought to be strong enough to be good even among these girls, like the apostles and martyrs.”
Just then the bell rang for recess, and Lou’s friends came to take her downstairs; and twenty minutes was not long enough for them to tell her all that had happened at school while she was away, and how they had missed her, and to explain why Dolly Brown’s father had taken her to Europe.
After recess came an exercise which the girls called “going up and down.” Miss Grafton had been reading ancient history to the class during the closing hour on Fridays, and she occasionally examined them on what she had read. These examinations were not recorded in the roll-book, but those who answered questions correctly “skipped” above those who failed, so that this exercise frequently caused important changes in the positions of scholars. Lou usually enjoyed such examinations very much, and answered questions very readily; but as she had been so long absent, she had no hope of any success. A few attempts, partly happy guesses, partly dim recollections of something she had heard her father reading at home, helped her over three or four rounds, and brought her above half a dozen scholars, tho she was still on the back row.
“Next! next!” said Miss Grafton. The question was passed rapidly down the line.
“How funny!” thought Lou: “surely they know who captured Babylon! Why it’s in the Bible!”
Two or three hands were raised.
“Well, Julia?”
“Nebuchadnezzar.”
There was a laugh.
“No. Next! next!”
It was coming down the next line. Lou’s hand was up.
“Next! next! Well, Lou, who was it?”
“Cyrus of Persia.”
“Correct. You may go up. Where did the question begin?”
More than half the class was moving down, and Lou took a seat beside Kitty Lawrence, who squeezed her hand delightedly.
“I knew she wouldn’t stay down there long, Miss Grafton,” said Lena Snow. She could not speak to Lou, so she said it to the teacher.
Then the questioning began again, at the head.
“How did they enter the city?”
Marion, the head girl, started, flushed, hesitated, and finally sat down with tearful eyes. Mabel, the second, looked up in consternation, exclaiming, “O Miss Grafton!” and gave it up without an effort.
“Next! next!”
Lena Snow hazarded a guess.
“They broke open the gates.”
“No; next!”
It ran down the first line—down the second—that relentless, “Next! next! next!” Nobody was quite sure how far it had gone.
Minnie Venn sprang up, she had been passed, and gasped out, “O, I know!” and sank into her seat again. It was doubtful if even Miss Grafton knew who was “next.”
Lou held up her hand, for fear she would be passed. Her heart beat very fast. At last her turn came.
“They turned the Euphrates into another bed, and passed over the old bed to the gates, and then a traitor inside opened the gates.”
“Right. You may go up.”
Lou rose, blushing very much, and took her place.
The girls clapped. They couldn’t help it. The girl at the foot had become the girl at the head!—The Occident.