It is possible that what stirred inside her head at that moment was her brain, waking up. She was nine years old, and she was in the third A grade at school, but that was the first time she had ever had a whole thought of her very own. At home, Aunt Frances had always known exactly what she was doing, and had helped her over the hard places before she even knew they were there; and at school her teachers had been carefully trained to think faster than the scholars. Somebody had always been explaining things to Elizabeth Ann so industriously that she had never found out a single thing for herself before. This was a very small discovery, but an original one. Elizabeth Ann was as excited about it as a mother-bird over the first egg that hatches. She forgot how afraid she was of Uncle Henry, and poured out to him her discovery. “It’s not right or left that matters!” she ended triumphantly; “it’s which way you want to go!” Uncle Henry looked at her attentively as she talked, eyeing her sidewise over the top of one spectacle-glass. When she finished—“Well, now, that’s so,” he admitted, and returned to his arithmetic. It was a short remark, shorter than any Elizabeth Ann had ever heard before. Aunt Frances and her teachers always explained matters at length. But it had a weighty, satisfying ring to it. The little girl felt the importance of having her statement recognized. She turned back to her driving. The slow, heavy plow horses had stopped during her talk with Uncle Henry. They stood as still now as though their feet had grown to the road. Elizabeth Ann looked up at the old man for instructions. But he was deep in his figures. She had been taught never to interrupt people, so she sat still and waited for him to tell her what to do. But, although they were driving in the midst of a winter thaw, it was a pretty cold day, with an icy wind blowing down the back of her neck. The early winter twilight was beginning to fall, and she felt rather empty. She grew very tired of waiting, and remembered how the grocer’s boy at home had started his horse. Then, summoning all her courage, with an apprehensive glance at Uncle Henry’s arithmetical silence, she slapped the reins up and down on the horses’ backs and made the best imitation she could of the grocer’s boy’s cluck. The horses lifted their heads, they leaned forward, they put one foot before the other ... they were off! The color rose hot on Elizabeth Ann’s happy face. If she had started a big red automobile she would not have been prouder. For it was the first thing she had ever done all herself ... every bit ... every smitch! She had thought of it and she had done it. And it had worked!