THE GIRL WHO COULD NOT WRITE. 53

Poor little Jem! Only sixteen years old, and a thousand
miles away from her father, as homesick as a lost canary,
stranded for a year in this awful Massachusetts boarding-
school, where the Juniors studied Greek and the Seniors
talked of applying at Amherst,— and couldn’t write a
composition !

Jem was not exactly a dunce, either. She stood very well
in algebra, and really enjoyed her natural philosophy. At
book-keeping she did no worse, perhaps a little better, than
most girls. In the gymnasium she had taken a prize. She
had a sunny little freckled face, too, with red hair that she
was n’t ashamed of, and red cheeks that she could n’t have
been ashamed of if she had tried; and people liked her, in a
way. Her teachers were slow to scold her, and the girls
were not apt to laugh at her. But not to be able to write a
composition in a school where the Seniors talked of applying
at Amherst!

The lecturer on style bore with her for one term. Then
he handed her and her compositions over to the principal.
The principal had been patient with her for another term.
Now she had grown so very patient that she sat perplexed.

“JT don’t know what to do with you,” she slowly said.

“T wish you would n’t do anything with me,’ said Jem,
doggedly.

The principal frowned a little, thinking this was imperti-
nent in Jem; then she smiled a little, and concluded that it
was only stupid.