meant to them. It had been reproduced in one of their readers. A larger print was now hung up on the platform for their inspection. Sheets of yellow paper were given them. They stared, thoughtfully masticating their pencils. Finally, the room was silent save for a minute scratching on paper.
The warm wind spouted about the eaves; the grasses bent, whistling gently.
Eugene wrote: “The girl is hearing the song of the first lark. She knows that it means Spring has come. She is about seventeen or eighteen years old. Her people are very poor, she has never been anywhere. In the winter she wears wooden shoes. She is making out as if she was going to whistle. But she doesn’t let on to the bird that she has heard him. The rest of her people are behind her, coming down the field, but we do not see them. She has a father, a mother, and two brothers. They have worked hard all their life. The girl is the youngest child. She thinks she would like to go away somewhere and see the world. Sometimes she hears the whistle of a train that is going to Paris. She has never ridden on a train in her life. She would like to go to Paris. She would like to have some fine clothes, she would like to travel. Perhaps she would like to start life new in America, the Land of Opportunity. The girl has had a hard time. Her people do not understand her. If they saw her listening to the lark they would poke fun at her. She has never had the advantages of a good education, her people are so poor, but she would profit by her opportunity if she did, more than some people who have. You can tell by looking at her that she’s intelligent.”
It was early in May; examinations came in another two weeks. He thought of them with excitement and pleasure—he liked the period of hard cramming, the long reviews, the delight of emptying out abundantly on paper his stored knowledge. The big assembly room had about it the odor of completion, of sharp nervous ecstasy. All through the summer it would be drowsy-warm; if only here, alone, with the big plaster cast of Minerva, himself and Bessie Barnes, or Miss—Miss—
“We want this boy,” said Margaret Leonard. She handed Eugene’s paper over to her husband. They were starting a private school for boys. That was what the paper had been for.
