The following Saturday the doll listened with unchanging face to a confession. "Every one of the big girls can press specimens better than I can. Their violet plants look like pictures but mine look like hay. I guess Uncle George will be discouraged. I don't do anything best. A robin is building a nest just outside the window where my seat is in school and I forgot to study my spelling lesson. Of course I missed half the words. It was the robin's fault. She ought to keep away from school children." CHAPTER XVII THE COMPOSITION ON WILD FLOWERS ALL the children in Marian's class were writing in their copy-books "Knowledge is Power." The pens squeaked and scratched and labored across pages lighted by June sunshine. The little girls' fingers were sticky and boy hands were cramped. It was monotonous work. The "K" was hard to make and the capital "P" was all flourishes. Marian sighed, then raised her hand. "What is it?" asked Miss Smith. "Will you tell which one of us has the best looking page when we get through with 'Knowledge is Power'?" Miss Smith consented and Marian, determined to conquer, grasped her pen firmly and bent to the task. Two days later the page was finished and seven copy-books were piled upon Miss Smith's desk for inspection. At first Miss Smith smiled as she examined the various assertions that "Knowledge is Power," then she grew serious. "Did you try your best, children?" she asked, whereupon five girls and two boys looked surprised and hurt. "Well, then, I wonder what is the trouble?" continued Miss Smith. "I am ashamed of your work, children, it seems as if you could do better." "Which is best?" demanded Marian. It made no difference how poor her copy was if only it was better than the others. The child was sorry she had asked the question when she knew the truth. "I think it is pretty discouraging," she said, "when you try your best and do the worst." "We will begin something new," Miss Smith suggested. "Next week we will write compositions on wild flowers and to the one who does the neatest looking work, I will give the little copy of 'Evangeline' I have been reading to you. It will make no difference whether the compositions are long or short, but the penmanship must be good. Every one of you knows the spring flowers for we have had them here in school and have talked about them every day." "Will we have to write in our copy-books just the same?" asked Tommy Perkins. "No," was the reply; "you may work on your compositions all the time we usually write in the copy-books, and remember, it doesn't make a bit of difference how short your compositions are." That was exactly what Marian did not remember. At first she wrote: "No flower is so pretty as the anemone that blooms on the windy hill." At recess she consulted Miss Smith. "Is that long enough?" she asked. "Yes, that will do," was the reply.