Ruth Arnold slowly wended her way home-wards along the hot dusty road,
turned down a shady green lane, opened a little gate and walked up the
garden path; and then, instead of running indoors as usual, she sat down
in the little rose-covered porch and looked rather thoughtfully at the
book in her hand.

It was a new book, a prize which had been awarded her that afternoon;
but she felt very little pride in it, for she had known all through the
half-year that the prize would be hers unless she was very idle or lazy.
Nor did she anticipate much pleasure in reading it, for it was only a
new English grammar, and grammar was not a study in which she felt
particularly interested at that moment.

It was not often that Ruth sat down to think, for she was a merry lively
girl; but this afternoon she felt rather discontented with her lot. The
truth was that she had been at Miss Green's school, the only one in the
village, ever since she was six years old; and now she had turned
fourteen, and began to feel some contempt for the elementary catechisms
which had been her only lesson-books, and which were certainly not
calculated to make learning attractive or interesting. The mode of
instruction at Miss Green's was the old-fashioned one of saying lessons
by rote from the said catechisms, and when the pupils had reached the
end of the book they had to begin again at the first chapter.

"I'm sure I don't know what I've learnt this half-year," said Ruth to
herself. "I can't remember learning a single thing which I didn't know
six months ago; and yet mother says that I must not leave school until I
am fifteen. I wonder what books they use in large boarding-schools, and
if they ever get beyond Mangnall's Questions in the first class. I