“When the teacher puts the arithmetic problems on the blackboard,” Rosie said, “I always get them done in five minutes. I’m good in arithmetic and they’re almost always correct. Then there’s nothing for me to do until the rest of the children have finished but read in my Reader that I’ve read through a million times; or my Geography that I have read just as often; or in the Supplementary Reading that I know just as well.” “That’s stupid,” Maida decided reflectively. “And then, when we have to write compositions, I nearly die,” Rosie went on in the same discontented vein. “I hate compositions. I never can think of anything to say. I always have to stay after school--” “Why Rosie, you write the most _wonderful_ letters,” Maida protested. “Oh how I enjoyed getting them abroad! You told me all the things I wanted to know and how I used to laugh at them too.” “Oh well, letters aren’t writing!” Rosie said scornfully. “Anybody can write letters.” “I can’t,” Arthur declared, “I hate writing letters.” “I don’t think it’s easy to write letters,” Laura interrupted, “although Maida and Rosie do it so easily. I think they’re just as hard as a composition. If you can write a letter, you ought to be able to write a composition, and if you can write a composition, you ought to be able to write a letter.” “And then,” Arthur went on with the argument, “geography is so dull in school. You never learn about the places you’d like to know about--like Gibraltar and the Desert of Sahara and the North Pole and the jungles of Africa and the Great Wall of China, and the Mammoth Cave and the Grand Cañon. Or history. Now I’d like to study about Richard Cœur de Lion and Robert Bruce and William Tell and Thermopylæ and the Alamo and the Battle of Hastings and Waterloo and Gettysburg. But you never get anything about them.” “Gracious!” Rosie commented, “I don’t even know what those are.” “Sometimes I like school,” Dicky said hesitatingly. “That’s because you have only gone to school one year,” Laura declared scornfully. “Well I’d rather be with you in a school that wasn’t very interesting,” Maida persisted, “than not be with you at all. Now next summer in the Little House--” “Next summer!” Rosie interrupted. “_Oh Maida, is there going to be a next summer?_” “Is there going to be a next summer?” Maida repeated. She stared about the circle of faces; all very intent; all waiting almost with hushed breath, for her reply. “Of course there’s going to be a next summer. What made you think there wasn’t?” “You never said once there was going to be a next summer,” Dicky accused her out of the hubbub which succeeded this statement. “Oh I could jump up and down!” “I _shall_ jump up and down,” Rosie announced--and did until the glass pendants to the candelabra tinkled. Maida could only repeat feebly, “But of course there’s going to be a next summer. It never occurred to me to tell you so. I thought you understood.”