At first, Miri keeps getting into trouble for talking back, even costing the other girls a visit home when she talks back to Tutor Olana (which makes everyone hate her). The only person who seems willing to talk to Miri is Britta, a girl who just moved to Mount Eskel from the lowlands (after her parents died) and is shunned by the other girls because they assume that she thinks she's better than them.
After some time though, Miri starts to excel at her lessons. She finds that she loves to read and spends all of her free time in the classroom going through Tutor Olana's books and reading about the history of Danland. She also starts to figure out how to use quarry-speech—the way that villagers communicate with each other silently when they're working in the quarries.
She often hears the other girls—especially an older girl named Katar—talking about how annoying she is, but Miri ignores them and continues to excel in her lessons. When it comes time for spring holiday, Tutor Olana springs an exam on the girls and says that only the girls who pass will be able to go home. Miri and Katar pass, but Miri thinks that it's unfair for the other girls to have to stay behind, so she uses quarry-speech to tell them all to run, and they scamper back to the village even though Tutor Olana protests.
