The first break in Gilbert’s world came when his mother decided that he and Olga ought to go to school. Gilbert was seven years old, and when his mother told him rather worriedly about it, he felt at first rather pleased at the idea of something so important. What would they teach him? Mother said Miss Waldron would teach him. He knew how to read and write and he could spell all the words he wrote. He read all the books he was given and sometimes looked into Hawthorne’s Wonder Tales, and read a page or two. When he went back for the book, however, he would forget where he had left off. So he would read a page anywhere. What did it matter? He read his Bible in the same haphazard way. He knew his multiplication table, and he liked to recite it. And he knew all about the calendar and the hymn-book. Most of these things he had known since he was four or five, and what good did they do him? But in the morning he liked taking Olga by the hand, and leading her out the gate under the big black-walnut trees, and down the street. Mother always kissed them good-bye with such a serious and anxious air that Gilbert felt he was setting out on a genuine mission. At the crossing he would restrain Olga from rushing ahead; then he would carefully look up and down the street to see if there were any horses and wagons coming. Then he would dash across, pulling Olga precipitately behind him. They would go along the upper green, under the great railroad bridge, and come to Miss Waldron’s. To Gilbert the school was an enormous joke. He could not take Miss Waldron seriously. Her tall, bony frame and her sad, fierce eyes touched no springs of affection in him. A lesson or two unlocked all the latent cruelty in him. She was there to teach Gilbert and Olga and the half-dozen other little children who came to the school-room over the kitchen, and she was determined to teach them. She knew that children under seven needed to be taught to read and write and spell. So she gritted her teeth, and came every morning to her hard and bitter work.