Miss Jenny looked frightened. The class feared she was going to cry. They determined to be better and more conscientious for her sake, feeling that they would die for Miss Jenny. But the Class Average was low again. How could it be otherwise with forty over-strained little consciences determining their own deserts?

One day Miss Jenny was sent for. When one was sent for, one went to the office. Little boys went there to be whipped. Sadie went there once; her grandma was dead, and they had sent for her.

Miss Jenny had been crying when she came back. Lessons went on miserably. Then Miss Jenny put the book down. It was evident she had not heard one word of the absent-minded and sympathetic little girl who said that a peninsula was a body of water almost surrounded by land.

Miss Jenny came to the edge of the platform. She looked way off a moment; then she looked at the class, and spoke. She said she was going to take them into her confidence. Miss Jenny was very young. She told them the teacher of the Third Reader, the Real Teacher, was not coming back, and that she had hoped to take the Real Teacher’s place, but the Class Average was being counted against her.

Everybody noticed the tremor in Miss Jenny’s voice. It broke on the fatal Class Average. Sadie began to cry.

The Third Reader Class gathered in knots and groups at recess. It depended on them whether Miss Jenny went or stayed. Emmy Lou stood in one of the groups, her chubby face bearing witness to her concern. “What is a Quarterly Examination?” asked Emmy Lou. Nobody seemed very sure.

“Oh,” said another little girl, “they give you questions, and you write down answers. My brother is in the Grammar School, and he has Examinations.”

“Quarterly Examinations?” asked Emmy Lou, who was definite.

The little girl did not know. She only knew if you answered right, you passed; if wrong, you failed.

And Miss Jenny would go.

There was an air of mystery about a Quarterly Examination. It made one uneasy before the actual thing came, while the uncertainty concerning it was trying to the nerves.

The day before Examination, Miss Jenny told every little girl to clear out her desk and carry all her belongings home. Then she went around and looked in each desk, for not a scrap of paper even must remain.

Miss Jenny told them that she trusted them, it was not that, it was because it was the rule.

“To cheat at Examination,” said Miss Jenny, “is worse even than to lie. To cheat is to steal—steal knowledge that doesn’t belong to you. To cheat at Examination is to be both a liar and a thief.”

The class scarcely breathed. This was terrible.

“About the first subject,” said Miss Jenny, “I feel safe. The first thing in the morning you will be examined in drawing.”

Emmy Lou at that remembered she had no tissue-paper. Neither had Hattie. Neither had Mamie. Everybody must be reminded. Miss Jenny told them to come with slate, pencils, and legal-cap paper. After school Emmy Lou and Hattie and Sadie and Mamie made mention of tissue-paper. The Drug-Store Man waited on Emmy Lou the next morning. Emmy Lou had a nickel. She wanted tissue-paper. The Drug-Store Man was curious. It seemed as if every little girl who came in wanted tissue-paper. Emmy Lou and the Drug-Store Man were great friends.

“What’s it got to do with rudiments of number?” asked the Drug-Store Man.

“It’s for drawing,” said Emmy Lou. “It’s Quarterly Examination.”

The Drug-Store Man was interested. He did not quite understand the system. Emmy Lou explained. Her chin did not reach the counter, but she looked up and he leaned over. The Drug-Store Man grew serious. He was afraid this might get Miss Jenny into trouble. He explained to Emmy Lou that it would be cheating to use tissue-paper in Examination, and told her she must draw right off the copy, according to the directions set down in the book. He suggested that she go and tell the others of the class. For that matter, if they came right over, he would take back the tissue-paper and substitute licorice sticks.

Emmy Lou hurried over to tell them. Examinations, she explained, were different, and to use tissue-paper would be cheating. And what would Miss Jenny say? Little girls hurried across the street, and the jar of licorice was exhausted.

Miss Jenny saw them seated. She told them she could trust them. No one in her class would cheat. Then a strange teacher from the class above came in to examine them. It was the rule. And Miss Jenny was sent away to examine a Primary School in another district.

But at the door she turned. Every eye was following her. They loved Miss Jenny. Her cheeks were glowing, and the draught, as Miss Jenny stood in the open doorway, blew her hair about her face. She smiled back at them. She turned to go. But again she turned—Miss Jenny—yes, Miss Jenny was throwing a kiss to the Third Reader Class.

The door closed. It was Examination. The page they were to draw had for copy a cup and saucer. No, worse, a cup in a saucer. And by it was a coffee-pot. And next to that was a pepper-box. And these were to be drawn for Quarterly Examination—without tissue-paper.

When Emmy Lou had finished she felt discouraged. In the result one might be pardoned for some uncertainty as to which was coffee-pot and which pepper-box. The cup and saucer seemed strangely like a circle in a hole. There was a yawning break in the paper from much erasure where the handle of the coffee-pot should have been. There were thumb marks and smears where nothing should have been. Emmy Lou looked at Hattie. Hattie looked worn out. She had her book upside down, putting the holes in the lid of the pepper-box. Sadie was crying. Tears were dropping right down on the page of her book.

The bell rang. Examination in drawing was over. The books were collected. Just as the teacher was dismissing them for recess she opened a book. She opened another. She turned to the front pages. She passed a finger over the reverse side of a page. She was a teacher of long years of experience. She told the class to sit down. She asked a little girl named Mamie Sessum to please rise. It was Mamie’s book she held. Mamie rose.

The teacher’s tones were polite. It made one tremble, they were so polite. “May I ask,” said the teacher, “to have explained the system by which the supposedly freehand drawing in this book has been done?”

“It wasn’t any system,” Mamie hastened to explain, anxious to disclaim a connection evidently so undesirable; “it was tissue-paper.”

“And this confessed openly to my face?” said the teacher. She was, even after many years at the business of exposing the natural depravity of the youthful mind, appalled at the brazenness of Mamie.

Mamie looked uncertain. Whatever she had done, it was well to have company. “We all used tissue-paper,” said Mamie.

It proved even so. The teacher, that this thing might be fully exposed, called the roll. Each little girl responded in alphabetical sequence. The teacher’s condition of shocked virtue rendered her coldly laconic.

“Tissue-paper?” she asked each little girl in turn.

“Tissue-paper” was the burden, if not the form, of every alarmed little girl’s reply.

“Cipher,” said the teacher briefly as each made confession, and called the next.

O—Outer darkness!

The teacher at the last closed her book with a snap. “Cipher and worse,” she told them. “You are cheats, and to cheat is to lie. And further, the class has failed in drawing.”

A bell rang. Recess was over.

The teacher, regarding them coldly, picked up the chalk, and turned to write on the board, “If a man——”

Examination in “New Eclectic Practical and Mental Primary Arithmetic” had begun.

The Third Reader Class, stunned, picked up its pencils. Miss Jenny had feared for them in arithmetic. They had feared for themselves. They were cheats and liars and they had failed. And the knowledge did not make them feel confident. They were cheats, and a suspicious and cold surveillance on the part of the teacher kept them reminded that she looked upon them as cheats and watched them accordingly. Misery and despair were their portion. And further, failure. In their state of mind it was inevitable for them to get lost in the maze of conditions surrounding “If a man——”

They did better next day in geography and reading. They passed on Friday in spelling and penmanship.

But the terrible fact remained—the teacher had declared them cheats and liars. If they could only see Miss Jenny. Miss Jenny would understand. Miss Jenny would make it all right after she returned.

When the Third Reader Class assembled on Monday, a tall lady occupied the platform. She was a Real Teacher. But at the door stood a memory of Miss Jenny, the hair blown about her face, kissing her hand.

The Third Reader Class never saw Miss Jenny again.

It was the day of the exhibition. At close of the half year the Third Reader Class had suffered a change in teachers, the first having been a Substitute, whereas her successor was a Real Teacher. And since the coming of Miss Carrie, the Third Reader Class had lived, as it were, in the public eye, for on Fridays books were put away and the attention given to recitations and company.

Miss Carrie talked in deep tones, which she said were chest tones, and described mysterious sweeps and circles with her hands when she talked. And these she called gestures. Miss Carrie was an elocutionist and had even recited on the stage.

She gave her class the benefit of her talent, and in teaching them said they must suit the action to the word. The action meant gestures, and gestures meant sweeps and circles.

Emmy Lou had to learn a piece for Friday. It was poetry, but you called it a piece, and though Uncle Charlie had selected it for Emmy Lou, Miss Carrie did not seem to think much of it.

Emmy Lou stood up. Miss Carrie was drilling her, and though she did her best to suit the action to the word, it seemed a complicated undertaking. The piece was called, “A Plain Direction.” Emmy Lou came to the lines:

“Straight down the Crooked Lane
And all round the Square.”

Whatever difficulties her plump forefinger had had over the first three of these geometrical propositions, it triumphed at the end, for Emmy Lou paused. A square has four sides, and to suit a four-sided action to the word, takes time.

Miss Carrie, whose attention had wandered a little, here suddenly observing, stopped her, saying her gestures were stiff and meaningless. She said they looked like straight lines cut in the air.

Emmy Lou, anxious to prove her efforts to be conscientious, explained that they were straight lines, it was a square. Miss Carrie drew herself up, and, using her coldest tones, told Emmy Lou not to be funny.

“Funny!” Emmy Lou felt that she did not understand.

But this was a mere episode between Fridays. One lived but to prepare for Fridays, and a Sunday dress was becoming a mere everyday affair, since one’s best must be worn for Fridays.

No other class had these recitations and the Third Reader was envied. Its members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realised one was standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed, longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie’s genius to plan and engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole school, but the play was for her own class alone.

And this was the day of the exhibition.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with instructions to return at half past two. The exhibition would begin at three.

“Of course,” Miss Carrie had said, “you will not fail to be on time.” And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou had wondered how she could even dream of such a thing.

It was not two o’clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to return.

They were in the same piece. It was The Play. In a play one did more than suit the action to the word, one dressed to suit the part.

In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned children of a soldier who had failed to return from the war. It was a very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once Emmy Lou had found tears in her own eyes, watching her.

Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked Hattie about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered then how tears came naturally to Sadie.

When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came to see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of Hattie.

“Dress them in a kind of mild mourning,” Miss Carrie explained, “not too deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters, suppose we dress them alike.”

And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for the play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses, with beltings of black sashes, flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober little black slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious little countenances. By the exact centre, each held a little handkerchief, black-bordered.

“It seems almost wicked,” Aunt Cordelia had ventured at this point; “it seems like tempting Providence.”

But Sadie’s mamma did not see it so. Sadie’s mamma had provided the handkerchiefs. Tears were Sadie’s feature in the play.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness of countenance, but it was a variant seriousness.

Hattie’s tense expression breathed a determination which might have been interpreted do or die; to Hattie life was a battling foe to be overcome and trodden beneath a victorious heel; Hattie was an infantile St. George always on the look for The Dragon, and to-day The Exhibition was The Dragon.

Sadie’s seriousness was a complacent realization of large responsibility. Her weeping was a feature. Sadie remembered she had histrionic talent.

Emmy Lou’s anxiety was because there loomed ahead the awful moment of mounting the platform. It was terrible on mere Fridays to mount the platform and, after vain swallowing to overcome a labial dryness and a lingual taste of copper, try to suit the action to the word, but to mount the platform for The Play—Emmy Lou was trying not to look that far ahead. But as the hour approached, the solemn importance of the occasion was stealing brainward, and she even began to feel glad she was a part of The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been worse even than the moment of mounting the platform.

“My grown-up brother’s coming,” said Hattie, “an’ my mamma an’ gran’ma an’ the rest.”

“My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door,” said Emmy Lou.

But it was Sadie’s hour. “Our minister’s coming,” said Sadie.

“Oh, Sadie,” said Hattie, and while there was despair in her voice one knew that in Hattie’s heart there was exultation at the very awfulness of it.

“Oh, Sadie,” said Emmy Lou, and there was no exultation in the tones of Emmy Lou’s despair. Not that Emmy Lou had much to do—hers was mostly the suiting of the action to some other’s word. She was chosen largely because of Hattie and Sadie who had wanted her. And then, too, Emmy Lou’s Uncle Charlie was the owner of a newspaper. The Exhibition might get into its columns. Not that Miss Carrie cared for this herself—she was thinking of the good it might do the school.

Emmy Lou’s part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of the soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie’s tearful allusion to an untimely grave.

Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. Emmy Lou was to advance one foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of orphan for whom no asylum was offered, “We know not where we go.”

That very morning, at gray of dawn, Emmy Lou had crept from her own into Aunt Cordelia’s bed, to say it over, for it weighed heavily on her mind, “We know not where we go.”

As Emmy Lou said it the momentous import of the confession fell with explosive relief on the go, as if the relief were great to have reached that point.

It seemed to Aunt Cordelia, however, that the where was the problem in the matter.

Aunt Louise called in from the next room. Aunt Louise had large ideas. The stress, she said, should be laid equally on know not, where, and go.

Since then, all day, Emmy Lou had been saying it at intervals of half minutes, for fear she might forget.

Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so to two o’clock, the orphaned heroines continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.

“Listen,” said Hattie, “I hear music.”

There was a church across the street. The drug-store adjoined it. It was a large church with high steps and a pillared portico, and its doors were open.

“It’s a band, and marching,” said Hattie.

The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning the corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men and boys accompanied it.

“It’s a funeral,” said Sadie, as if she intuitively divined the mournful.

Hattie turned with a face of conviction. “I know. It’s that big general’s funeral; they’re bringing him here to bury him with the soldiers.”

“We’ll never see a thing for the crowd,” despaired Sadie.

Emmy Lou was gazing. “They’ve got plumes in their hats,” she said.

“Let’s go over on the church steps and see it go by,” said Hattie, “it’s early.”

The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the steps. At the top they turned.

There were plumes and more, there were flags and swords, and a band led.

But at the church with unexpected abruptness the band halted, turned, it fell apart, and the procession came through; it came right on through and up the steps, a line of uniforms and swords on either side from curb to pillar, and halted.

Aghast, between two glittering files, the orphaned children shrank into the shadow behind a pillar, while upstreamed from the carriages below an unending line—bare-headed men, and ladies bearing flowers. Behind, below, about, closing in on every side, crowded people, a sea of people.

The orphaned children found themselves swept from their hiding by the crowd and unwillingly jostled forward into prominence.

A frowning man with a sword in his hand seemed to be threatening everybody; his face was red and his voice was big, and he glittered with many buttons. All at once he caught sight of the orphaned children and threatened them vehemently.

“Here,” said the frowning man, “right in here,” and he placed them in line.

The orphaned children were appalled, and even in the face of the man cried out in protest. But the man of the sword did not hear, for the reason that he did not listen. Instead he was addressing a large and stout lady immediately behind them.

“Separated from the family in the confusion, the grandchildren evidently—just see them in, please.”

And suddenly the orphaned children found themselves a part of the procession as grandchildren. The nature of a procession is to proceed. And the grandchildren proceeded with it. They could not help themselves. There was no time for protest, for, pushed by the crowd which closed and swayed above their heads, and piloted by the stout lady close behind, they were swept into the church and up the aisle, and when they came again to themselves were in the inner corner of a pew near the front.

The church was decked with flags.

So was the Third Reader room. It was hung with flags for The Exhibition.

Hattie in the corner nudged Sadie. Sadie urged Emmy Lou, who, next to the stout lady, touched her timidly. “We have to get out,” said Emmy Lou, “we’ve got to say our parts.”

“Not now,” said the lady, reassuringly, “the programme is at the cemetery.”

Emmy Lou did not understand, and she tried to tell the lady.

“S’h’h,” said that person, engaged with the spectacle and the crowd, “sh-h-”

Abashed, Emmy Lou sat, sh-h-ed.

Hattie arose. It was terrible to rise in church, and at a funeral, and the church was filled, the aisles were crowded, but Hattie rose. Hattie was a St. George and A Dragon stood between her and The Exhibition.

She pushed by Sadie, and past Emmy Lou. Hattie was as slim as she was strenuous, or perhaps she was slim because she was strenuous, but not even so slim a little girl as Hattie could push by the stout lady, for she filled the space.

At Hattie’s touch she turned. Although she looked good-natured, the size and ponderance of the lady were intimidating. She stared at Hattie; people were looking; it was in church; Hattie’s face was red.

“You can’t get to the family,” said the lady, “you couldn’t move in the crowd. Besides I promised to see to you. Now be quiet,” she added crossly, when Hattie would have spoken. She turned away. Hattie crept back vanquished by this Dragon.

“So suitably dressed,” the stout lady was saying to a lady beyond; “grandchildren, you know.”

“She says they are grandchildren,” echoed the whispers around.

“Even their little handkerchiefs have black borders,” somebody beyond replied.

Emmy Lou wondered if she was in some dreadful dream. Was she a grandchild or was she an orphan? Her head swam.

The service began and there fell on the unwilling grandchildren the submission of awe. The stout lady cried, she also punched Emmy Lou with her elbow whenever that little person moved, but finally she found courage to turn her head so she could see Sadie.

Sadie was weeping into her black-bordered handkerchief, nor were they the tears of histrionic talent. They were real tears. People all about were looking at her sympathetically. Such grief in a grandchild was very moving.

It may have been minutes, it seemed to Emmy Lou hours, before there came a general up-rising. Hattie stood up. So did Sadie and Emmy Lou. Their skirts no longer stood out jauntily; they were quite crushed and subdued.

There was a wild, hunted look in Hattie’s eyes. “Watch the chance,” she whispered, “and run.”

But it did not come. As the pews emptied, the stout lady passed Emmy Lou on, addressing some one beyond. “Hold to this one,” she said, “and I’ll take the other two, or they’ll get tramped in the crowd.”

Emmy Lou felt herself grasped, she could not see up to find by whom. The crowd in the aisle had closed above her head, but she heard the stout lady behind saying, “Did you ever see such an ill-mannered child!” and Emmy Lou judged that Hattie was struggling against Fate.

Slowly the crowd moved, and, being a part of it however unwillingly, Emmy Lou moved too, out of the church and down the steps. Then came the crashing of the band and the roll of carriages, and she found herself in the front row on the curb.

The man with the brandishing sword was threatening violently. “One more carriage is here for the family,” called the man with the sword. His face was red and his voice was hoarse. His glance in search for the family suddenly fell on Emmy Lou. She felt it fall.

The problem solved itself for the man with the sword, and his brow cleared. “Grandchildren next,” roared the threatening man.

“Grandchildren,” echoed the crowd.

Hattie and Sadie were pushed forward from somewhere, Hattie lifting her voice. But what was the cry of a Hattie before the brazen utterance of the band? Sadie was weeping wildly.

Emmy Lou with the courage of despair cried out in the grasp of the threatening man, but the man lifting her into the carriage, was speaking himself, and to the driver. “Keep an eye on them—separated from the family,” he was explaining, and a moment later Hattie and Sadie were lifted after Emmy Lou into the carriage, and as the door banged, their carriage moved with the rest up the street.

“Now,” said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door.

It would not open. Things never will in dreadful dreams.

Through the carriage windows the school, with its arched doorways and windows, gazed frowningly, reproachfully. A gentleman entered the gate and went in the doorway.

“It’s our minister,” said Sadie, weeping afresh.

Hattie beat upon the window, and called to the driver, but no mortal ear could have heard above that band.

“An’ my grown-up brother, an’ gran’ma an’ the rest,” said Hattie. And Hattie wept.

“And the visiting lady next door,” said Emmy Lou. She did not mean to weep, tears did not come readily to Emmy Lou, but just then her eyes fell upon the handkerchief still held by its exact centre in her hand. What would The Exhibition do without them?

Then Emmy Lou wept.

Late that afternoon a carriage stopped at a corner upon which a school building stood. Since his charges were but infantile affairs, the coloured gentleman on the box thought to expedite matters and drop them at the corner nearest their homes.

Descending, the coloured gentleman flung open the door, and three little girls crept forth, three crushed little girls, three limp little girls, three little girls in a mild kind of mourning.

They came forth timidly. They looked around. They hoped they might reach their homes unobserved.

There was a crowd up the street. A gathering of people—many people. It seemed to be at Emmy Lou’s gate. Hattie and Sadie lived farther on.

“It must be a fire,” said Hattie.

But it wasn’t. It was The Exhibition, the Principal, and Miss Carrie, and teachers and pupils, and mammas and aunties and Uncle Charlie.

“An’ gran’ma—” said Hattie.

“And the visiting lady—” said Emmy Lou.

“And our minister,” said Sadie.

The gathering of many people caught sight of them presently, and came to meet them, three little girls in mild mourning.

The little girls moved slowly, but the crowd moved rapidly.

The gentlemen laughed, Uncle Charlie and the minister and the papa or two, laughed when they heard, and laughed again, and went on laughing, they leaned against the fence.

But the ladies could see nothing funny, the mammas, nor Aunt Cordelia. That mild mourning had been the result of anxious planning and consultation.

Neither could Miss Carrie. She said they had failed her. She said it in her deepest tones and used gestures.

Sadie wept, for the sight of Miss Carrie recalled afresh the tears she should have shed with Histrionic Talent.

The parents and guardians led them home.

Emmy Lou was tired. She was used to a quiet life, and never before had been in the public eye.

At supper she nodded and mild mourning and all, suddenly Emmy Lou collapsed and fell asleep, her head against her chair.

Uncle Charlie woke her. He stood her up on the chair and held out his arms. Uncle Charlie meant to carry her as if she were a baby thing again up to bed.

“Come,” said Uncle Charlie.

Emmy Lou stood dazed and flushed, she was not yet quite awake.

Uncle Charlie had caught snatches of school vernacular. “Come,” said he, “suit the action to the word.”

Emmy Lou woke suddenly, the words smiting her ears with ominous import. She thought the hour had come, it was The Exhibition.

She stood stiffly, she advanced a cautious foot, her chubby hand described a careful half circle. Emmy Lou spoke—

“We know not where we go,” said Emmy Lou.

“No more we do,” said Uncle Charlie.

Miss Lizzie kept in.

The ways of teachers like rainy days and growing pains belong to the inexplicable and inevitable. All teachers have ways, that is to be expected, it is the part of an Emmy Lou to adjust herself to meet, not to try to understand, these ways.

Miss Lizzie kept in, but that was only one of her ways, she had many others. Perhaps they were no more peculiar than the ways of her predecessors, but they were more alarming.

Miss Lizzie placed a deliberate hand on her call bell and, as its vibrations dinged and smote upon the shrinking tympanum, a rigid and breathless expectancy would pervade the silence of the Fourth Reader room.

Miss Lizzie was tall, she seemed to tower up and over one’s personality. One had no mind of her own, but one said what one thought Miss Lizzie wanted her to say. Sometimes one got it wrong. Then Miss Lizzie’s cold up-and-down survey smote one into a condition something akin to vacuity, until Miss Lizzie said briefly, “Sit down.”

Then one sat down hastily.

Miss Lizzie never wasted a word. Miss Lizzie closed her lips. She closed them so their lines were blue. Her eyes were blue too, but not a pleasant blue. Miss Lizzie did not scold, she looked. She kept looking until one became aware of an elbow resting on the desk. In her room little girls must sit erect.

Sometimes she changed. It came suddenly. One day it came suddenly and Miss Lizzie boxed the little girl’s ears. The little girl had knocked over a pile of slates collected on the platform for marking.

Another time she changed. It was when the little girl brought a note from home because her ears were boxed. Miss Lizzie tore the note in pieces and threw them on the floor.

One lived in dread of her changing. One watched in order to know the thing she wanted. Emmy Lou knew every characteristic feature of her face—the lean nose that bent toward the cheek, the thin lips that tightened and relaxed, the cold survey that travelled from desk to desk.

Miss Lizzie’s thin hands were never still any more than were her eyes. Most often her fingers tore bits of paper into fine shreds while she heard lessons.

Life is strenuous. In each reader the strenuousness had taken a different form. In the Fourth Reader it was Copy-Books.

Miss Lizzie always took an honour in Copy-Books, and she meant to take an honour this year. But the road to fame is laborious.

She had her methods. Each morning she gave out four slips of paper to each little girl. This was trial paper. On these slips each little girl practised until the result was good enough, in Miss Lizzie’s opinion, to go into the book. Some lines must be fine and hair-like. Over these Emmy Lou held her breath anxiously. Others must be heavy and laboured. Over these she unconsciously put the tip of her tongue between her teeth until it was just visible between her lips.

What, however, is school for but the accommodating of self to the changing demands of teachers? In the Fourth Reader it was fine lines on the upward strokes and heavy lines on the downward.

Emmy Lou finally found the way. By turning the pen over and writing with the back of the point, the upward strokes emerged fine and hair-like. This having somewhat altered the mechanism of the pen point, its reversal brought lines sombre and heavy. It was slow and laborious, and it spoiled an alarming number of pen points; but then it achieved fine lines upward and heavy lines downward, and that is what Copy-Books are for.

Hattie reached the result differently. She kept two bottles of ink, one for fine and one for heavy lines. One was watered ink and one was not.

The trouble was about the trial-paper. One could have only four pieces. And the copy could go in the book only after the writing on the trial paper met with the approval of Miss Lizzie. So if one reached the end of the trial-paper before reaching approval one was kept in, for a half page of Copy-Book must be done each day. And “kept in” meant staying after school, in hunger, disgrace, and the silence of a great, deserted building, to write on trial-paper until the copy was good enough to be put in.

Emmy Lou did not sit with Hattie in the Fourth Reader. On the first day Miss Lizzie asked the class if there was any desk-mate a little girl preferred. At that one’s heart opened and one told Miss Lizzie.

At first Emmy Lou did not understand. For Miss Lizzie promptly seated all the would-be mates as far apart as possible.

Emmy Lou thought about it. It seemed as though Miss Lizzie did it to be mean.

Then Emmy Lou’s cheeks grew hot. She put the thought quickly away that she might forget it; but the wedge was entered. Teachers were no longer infallible. Emmy Lou had questioned the motives of pedagogic deism.

And so Emmy Lou and Hattie were separated. But there were three new little girls near Emmy Lou. Their kid button-shoes had tassels. Very few little girls had button-shoes. Button-shoes were new. Emmy Lou had button-shoes. She was proud of them. But they did not have tassels.

The three new little girls looked amused at everything, and exchanged glances; but they were not mean glances—not the kind of glances when little girls nudge each other and go off to whisper. Emmy Lou liked the new little girls. She could not keep from looking at them. They spread their skirts so easily when they sat down. There was something alluring about the little girls.

At recess Emmy Lou waited near the door for them. They all went out together. After that they were friends. They lived on Emmy Lou’s square. It was strange. But they had just come there to live. That explained it.

“In the white house, the white house with the big yard,” the tallest of the little girls explained. She was Alice. The others were her cousins. They were Rosalie and Amanthus. Such charming names.

Emmy Lou was glad that she lived in the other white house on the square with the next biggest yard. She never had thought of it before, but now she was glad.

Alice talked and Amanthus shook her curls back off her shoulders, and Rosalie wore a little blue locket hung on a golden chain. And Rosalie laughed.

“Isn’t it funny and dear?” asked Alice.

“What?” said Emmy Lou.

“The public school,” said Alice.

“Is it?” said Emmy Lou.

And then they all laughed, and they hugged Emmy Lou, these three fluttering butterflies. And they told Emmy Lou she was funny and dear also.

“We’ve never been before,” said Alice.

“But we are too far from the other school now,” said Rosalie.

“It was private school,” said Amanthus.

“And this is public school,” said Alice.

“It’s very different,” said Amanthus.

“Oh, very,” said Rosalie.

Emmy Lou went and brought Hattie to know the little girls. All the year Emmy Lou was bringing Hattie to know the little girls. But Hattie did not seem to like the little girls as Emmy Lou did. She seemed to prefer Sadie when she could not have Emmy Lou alone. Hattie liked to lead. She could lead Sadie. Generally she could lead Emmy Lou, not always.

But all the while slowly a conviction was taking hold in Emmy Lou’s mind. It was a conviction concerning Miss Lizzie.

Near Emmy Lou in the Fourth Reader room sat a little girl named Lisa—Lisa Schmit. Once Emmy Lou had seen Lisa in a doorway—a store doorway hung with festoons of linked sausage. Lisa had told Emmy Lou it was her papa’s grocery store.

One day the air of the Fourth Reader room seemed unpleasantly freighted. As the stove grew hotter, the unpleasantness grew assertive.

Forty little girls were bending over their slates. It was problems. It had been Digits, Integral Numbers, Tables, Rudiments, according to the teacher, in one’s upward course from the Primer, but now it was Problems, though in its nature it was always the same, as complicated as in its name it was varied.

The air was most unpleasant. It took the mind off the finding of the Greatest Common Divisor.

The call-bell on Miss Lizzie’s desk dinged. The suddenness and the emphasis of the ding told on unexpected nerves, but it brought the Fourth Reader class up erect.

“Who in this room has lunch?” said Miss Lizzie, and her very tones hurt. It was as though one were doing wrong in having lunch.

Many hands were raised. There were luncheons in nearly every desk.

“File by the platform in order, bringing your lunch,” said Miss Lizzie.