Elizabeth's head drooped. In a shamed whisper she confessed that Miss Hillary's wonderful vocabulary had tempted her. She dared not look up and did not see that her teacher's pretty mouth twitched. "Well," she said in a very pleasant tone, "you did not behave so badly after all. But remember, you must always sit still and listen when I am talking." Elizabeth's head came up. Her face was radiant, her gray eyes shone starlike. "Oh, Miss Hillary!" she gasped, overcome with gratitude at this giving back of her self-respect. Miss Hillary picked up the next essay, and the little girl turned way. But she could not leave without one word of hope. "Oh, Miss Hillary," she whispered again, "do you think you could let me pass? If you'll only not put me in Mary's class, I'll, I'll--I believe I could learn to spell!" she finally added, as the most extravagant promise she could possibly make. Miss Hillary smiled again. She looked kindly at the small, anxious figure, the pleading face with its big eyes, the slim, brown hands twisting nervously the long, heavy braid of brown hair with the golden strand through it. "Well, I shall do my best," she said. "You can certainly write, even if you can't do arithmetic. Now run away and play." And, wild with hope and joy, Elizabeth dashed down the aisle and out of the door, so noisy and boisterous that for a moment her teacher felt constrained to call her back and give her another lesson in deportment. For Miss Hillary did not yet understand. CHAPTER VII THE AGE OF CHIVALRY Many years later there came days in Elizabeth Gordon's life when she achieved a certain amount of fame, but never at their height did any day shine so radiantly for her or bring her anything of the exaltation of that moment when she and Rosie tremblingly took their places side by side at the foot of the Junior Fourth class. For a time Elizabeth strove to live up to her lofty position. The fear of even yet being sent back to Mary's class, which Miss Hillary held over her as an incentive to working fractions, drove her to make desperate efforts even to learn spelling. Rosie helped her all she could, and Rosie was a perfect wonder at finding royal roads to learning. If you could spell a word over seventeen times without drawing your breath, she promised, you would be able to repeat it correctly forever after. Elizabeth tried this plan with "hieroglyphics," but reached the end of her breath, purple and gasping, with only fourteen repetitions to her credit. She attributed her failure to spell the word the next day to this, rather than to the fact that, in her anxiety to accomplish the magic number, she had changed the arrangement of the letters several times.