t
to work in the stocking factory. Every one thought it was a pity,
because Lizette was fond of books and had meant to be a teacher; she was
slight and delicate, too, and work in the stocking factory was hard. But
Lizette believed in doing "not what ye would, but what you may," with
just as good a will as if it were the former. Some people said she had
taken warning by her father's example; he had always been trying to
invent something in his queer little workshop that was the wood-shed
chamber; that was why the rocks had not been gotten out of the farm.

It was Viola who was now spoken of as a remarkably fine scholar, just as
Lizette had been before she went into the factory; she was not yet
sixteen, but she hoped to get the Pine Bank School to teach in
September. There were several other candidates, all older than she, but
Viola was at the head of her class, and that original composition which
she was to read at the exhibition was expected to make an impression
upon the committee-men. The teacher had said to several people that it
was really a remarkable production for a girl of Viola's age, and they
thought a great deal of literary gifts in Bilberry.

Lizette was very proud of Viola, and so, indeed, was Amasa, who was
fourteen now, but whose name was not on the programme at all. To tell
the painful truth at once, although Amasa keenly felt the especial need
there was that he should be "smart," although he tried his best to be
the man of the family in a satisfactory sense, yet he was at the very
foot of his class; fractions floored him, and he had a hazy idea that
Timbuctoo was out West, and that Captain John Smith discovered America.
When it came to chopping wood, Amasa was pretty sure to cut his toe, and
if he went fishing he tumbled into the pond. And he couldn't get "jobs,"
like Cosy Pringle, the boy in the next house, who had money in the bank.

Cosy Pringle boasted that he always "came out top of the heap"; but some
people thought he was too "smart."

When the exhibition day came, although Simpsy Judkins had been announced
to "speak a piece," it was Cosy Pringle who spoke it; there was a report
that he had hired Simpsy to have a sore throat. Simpsy had oratorical
gifts, but he did not feel the advantages of appearing in public and
having his name in the paper, as Cosy did. Cosy held the second rank in
declamation, so Simpsy's sore throat gave him an opportunity to be
heard. He wasn't second in his class; he c