Free Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager Page A

straight as any boy. Then at the height of the game, when she was victor over everyone else, boys and girls alike, the tall girl stopped throwing, went to the schoolhouse door, and swung a big hand bell. And Susan understood.
    Not only was the tall girl the teacher, but the teacher was Grannie, back when she was in her prime!
    Susan looked at John, and he seemed to be realizing the same thing. And then the boys and girls started filing into the schoolhouse, and John and Susan filed in after them.
    Inside was a potbellied stove by the teacher's desk and two rows of desks and seats, bolted to the floor. The boys sat in one row and the girls in the other, with the littlest down front and the biggest ones in the back (for Grannie, when she was a teacher, had taught all grades at once).
    Susan and John found empty seats and sat down.
    The first lesson of the day was spelling. Grannie began with the shortest words and the youngest children; so Susan's mind was free to wander. It wandered to Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka.
    It was too bad they would be missing whatever was about to happen. Still, if Barnaby were here, he would have all the ideas and run everything, the way he always did. And apparently the book meant this extra adventure to be just hers and John's and Grannie's.
    On the other hand, Barnaby had been awfully good today about Susan's losing the magic book and hadn't made a single sarcastic remark. It didn't seem fair for him and Abbie and Fredericka to be out of it now.
    Susan was thinking so hard about this that she forgot to pay attention to the spelling lesson. Suddenly she looked up. The tall girl who was really Grannie was standing at her side, looking down at her, and her black eyes snapped.
    "Susan, your thoughts are wool-gathering," she said sternly. "Rise and spell 'xanthophyll.'"
    Susan stood up by her desk and blushed. She remembered that in the Little House books "xanthophyll" was the word Laura couldn't spell at the spelling bee, but Pa could. She remembered the whole scene in the book, but she couldn't remember the look of the word.
    "I can't," she said. "I'm sorry."
    Grannie's young mouth relaxed a little, and her eyes stopped snapping and twinkled. "I couldn't, either, when I was your age," she said, "and it's not a word I've found occasion to use often, since. Still, every piece of knowledge is a piece of knowledge. X-a-n, zan; t-h-o, tho, zantho; p-h-y-double 1, xanthophyll. Write it three times on the blackboard and you will remember."
    Susan stepped to the blackboard and did as she was told. Grannie moved to the teacher's desk again, and Susan noticed that while she was holding the spelling book in her right hand, her left hand rested on another book, on the corner of the desk. It was a red book, smallish but plump, comfortable and shabby.
    As Susan finished writing "xanthophyll" on the blackboard for the third time and turned to go back to her seat, she let her hand brush against the desk (and against the red book) and wished that Barnaby and the little girls would find their way into this adventure somehow.
    Later on she was to be glad that she had. Right now she turned her mind to the next lesson.
    The next lesson was arithmetic, and John was standing by his desk struggling to divide 264 by 12 when the door opened and three figures walked in. The three figures looked startled, to say the least, and as if they weren't sure how or why they had come.
    "Good morning," said Grannie from the teacher's desk. "You are new pupils?"
    "I guess so," said the largest figure.
    "This is not a guessing game," said Grannie sternly. "Say 'Yes, ma'am.' What is your name?"
    "Barnaby," said the figure, "and she's Abbie and she's Fredericka."
    "Barnaby, Abigail, and Fredericka," said Grannie, "you may find seats. I shall not mark you tardy since it is your first day, but be on time in future."
    Fredericka found the last empty seat, down front. Susan moved over quickly and patted the place beside her, and Abbie, with