gences when
I was a girl." But, mother-like, Mrs. Leverett "eased up" many things
for Betty. Electa King half envied them, and yet she confessed in her
secret heart that she had enjoyed her girlhood and her lover very much.
She and Matthias King had been neighbors and played as children, went to
church and to singing school together, and on visitors' night at the
debating society she was sure to be the visitor. Girls did not have just
that kind of boy friends now, she thought.

The softening of religious prejudices was softening character as well.
Yet the intensity of Puritanism had kindled a force of living that had
done a needed work. People really discussed religious problems nowadays,
while even twenty years before it was simply belief or disbelief, and
the latter "was not to be suffered among you."

Mrs. Leverett kept to her habit of early rising. True, dark and stormy
mornings Mr. Leverett allowed himself a little latitude, for very few
people came to buy his wares early in the morning. But breakfast was a
little after six, except on Sunday morning, when it dropped down to
seven.

And Mrs. Webb's school began at eight from the first day of February to
the first day of November. The intervening three months it was half-past
eight and continued to half-past twelve.

Doris came home quite sober. "Well," began Uncle Leverett, "how did
school go?"

"I didn't like it very much," she answered slowly.

"What did you do?"

"I read first. Four little girls and two boys read. We all stood in a
row."

"What then?"

"We spelled. But I did not know where the lesson was, and I think Mrs.
Webb gave me easy words."

"And you did not enjoy that?" Uncle Leverett gave a short laugh.

"I was glad not to miss," she replied gravely.

"Mrs. Webb uses Dilworth's speller," said Mrs. Leverett, "and so I gave
her Betty's. But she has a different reader. She thought Doris read
uncommon well."

"And what came next?"

"They said tables all together. Why do they call them tables?"

"Because a system of calculation would be too long a name," he answered
dryly.

Doris looked perplexed. "Then there was geography. What a large place
America is!" and she sighed.

"Yes, the world is a good-sized planet, when you come to consider. And
America is only one side of it."

"I don't see how it keeps going round."

"That must be viewed with the eye of faith," commented Betty.

"All that does very well. I am sorry you did not like i