“I suppose I have to go to the principal’s office now and recite it before I can get the certificate,” she said after a pause, during which Mr. Andrews drummed moodily on the table without looking at her.

“No, no, you can’t do that,” he hastened to say, reaching out to hold her back in case she tore out the door on this ambitious errand. “This isn’t regular at all, and I don’t know who gave you the idea that it was. But you speak real well, and you went to the trouble of this trip, so maybe I can get the principal and Dr. Bosley on the phone about it. If they say it’s okay I’ll give you your certificate right now.”

Marcia wanted to ask what about the ten dollars, but she didn’t dare. She listened with pounding heart while Mr. Andrews made his phone calls, explaining that there was a kid in the office reciting pieces like a house afire, because her folks wouldn’t let her come to the regular exercises, and was it all right to give her the certificate. Apparently this was all right, for he started shaking his fountain pen over an impressive document.

“What put it in your head to want this certificate anyway?” he asked, stealing a curious look at her.

“Because I want to get a job, and it shows what I can do,” Marcia explained, “especially if you aren’t in high school yet.”

Mr. Andrews allowed that that was right, and after thoughtfully drumming on the table some more said there wasn’t anything he could do about the prize without his two fellow-judges, but he was pretty sure they’d be glad to chip in with him on a private award for ambition, and here was five dollars.

He advised her to put it aside in a savings bank as a start towards college, maybe a great career—look at Edison who came from a little town not a hundred miles off. Mr. Andrews began warming to his subject, which was evidently a familiar one, possibly the very speech he had delivered at the public school commencement exercises. It was Marcia’s turn to look embarrassed as the sole recipient of this inspirational talk. In the middle Mr. Andrews even got up and pounded his desk when he mentioned the government, which he said would never be the same until we got Teddy Roosevelt back in office. Marcia wiggled from one foot to the other, wondering how much more she would have to listen before she got the five dollars. Mr. Andrews stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and sat down, mopping his forehead. Not knowing exactly what to do Marcia clapped her hands, which embarrassed the editor to the point of hastily handing her the five dollars and muttering something about work to be done.

On the streetcar going back to London Junction, Marcia thought she might have won even more money by going to the other two judges, but it was too late, and besides she would be getting home before noon. It was a great day. It was too bad she couldn’t show off her white dress to Lena, but the best thing was to leave the outfit at Mrs. Gross’s and go home in her checked gingham in case She was home. She was so full of excitement that it was a blow to come into the kitchen and find that Minelda and Florrie had not only tipped over a pan of biscuit dough on the kitchen floor, but had tracked it into the forbidden rooms. Marcia angrily set to cleaning up the mess, knowing she would get scolded for letting it happen, then for not cleaning it up right. It was awful the way your home and your family could take all the joy out of life.