Bessie is a little girl. She is only five. She does not go to school and, of course, she does not know how to read and to write. But her sister Mary is a schoolgirl. She is ten. One day Mary sees her little sister at the table with a pen in her hand and some paper in front of her. “What are you doing, Bessie?” she says. Bessie answers: “I am writing a letter to my friend Kitty.” But you don’t know how to write,” says her sister. “Well,” says Bessie, “it doesn’t matter, because Kitty does not know how to read.”